Now, a book on maternal care from IIMA

The latest book that has been compiled by the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA) will give its readers an overall understanding of the historical and contemporary scenario of policies and practices and challenges relating to maternal care and its needs in the country and the road map ahead.

While the compilation of the book, called 'Midwifery and Maternal Health in India: Situation Analysis and lessons from the field,' is completed, it will be officially released on May 5, which is also the international midwifery day. The 463 pages book will be handed away free of cost to policy makers, researchers and academicians.

"The book will be a ready reference for policy makers and researchers and others to understand the nursing, midwifery and maternal health in the country," said Dileep V Mavalankar, faculty of IIMA who has coordinated the project.

He said, "Recommendations about what should be done to strengthen midwifery have emerged through the project."
Talking about the importance of the book, Mavalankar said, "While text books for nursing and midwifery are available, such books (like ours) which give an overall picture of the conditions of midwifery and maternal health are rare in the country."

A four-year project which led to the emergence of the 24-chapters book had established four centres for advanced midwifery training in colleges of nursing in Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Chennai for improving the quality of the students through training of teachers.

While the book documents the results of the project, it also contains other important research papers as well.

Mavalankar said, "We have also included some published papers by IIMA and the project partners on maternal health in various internal journals."

The project was sponsored by Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) and partners included Academy for Nursing Studies, The Whilte Ribbon Alliance, The Trained Nurses Association of India, Society of Midwives of India, Swedish Association of Midwives and Karolinska Institute of Sweden.
He said, "Access to good midwifery services has been found to be an important factor in reduction of maternal deaths internationally and yet, in India it has been neglected in the past four decades both in terms of research to understand the issue and in specific programmes to develop skills of functionaries in provision of maternal care."