SATSE has requested the Ministry of Health to increase the workforce of midwives by at least 1,617 professionals in the Valencian Community to comply with the standards of quality of care of the World Health Organization (WHO), which establishes a ratio of one midwife for every 400 women of childbearing age, as claimed by the Nursing union in a statement.
Recently, the Ministry of Health has created fifteen new midwife structural positions, a “totally insufficient” amount judging by the study carried out by the union alliance.
Thus, the SATSE study shows “the deficient” provision of specialist nurses in Obstetrics-Gynecology in all health departments of the Ministry of Health, both direct management and management by administrative concession.
In this sense, he points out that according to the ‘Report on Nursing care professionals. Supply-need 2010-2025’, published by the Ministry of Health, the total number of active midwives in our country is 6,272.
In this way, compared to the rest of the OECD countries, Spain comes out “very badly, with less than half of the midwives than the average of developed countries.” In 2019, the ratio in Spain was eighteen midwives per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to 34 midwives per 100,000 inhabitants and 25.9 midwives per 1,000 births on average in the OECD.
If we take into account the recommendations of the WHO, the current ratio in the departments managed directly by the Regional Ministry stands at an average of 1,286.83 women for each midwife, which is more than three times that recommended by the WHO. As for administrative concessions, they have a deficit of 166 midwives to reach what is recommended by the WHO.
The most deficient Departments in the entire Valencian Community are the General Hospital of Alicante, the Arnau-Llíria, the San Juan, the General Hospital of Castelón, the Peset, the Clínico-Malvarrosa and the General Hospital of Valencia. All of them are around a deficit of around one hundred professionals.
The total number of midwives is 737 (83 from the concessions and 654 from the Department of Health), which would give us a ratio of 14.6 midwives per 100,000 inhabitants. With these data, the Valencian Community was “well below” the national average in 2019 (eighteen midwives per 100,000 inhabitants), and far from the 34 midwives per 100,000 inhabitants of the average of the OECD countries.
For this reason, SATSE asks the Ministry to increase the structural staff of obstetric-gynecological specialist nurses to “get as close as possible to the WHO recommendations.”
Thus, it highlights that this increase would mean an improvement in care for women in a wide age range that includes pregnancy, childbirth, lactation, sexual and reproductive health, menopause, etc., as well as an improvement in the working conditions of these women. professionals who also perform management, research and teaching functions.
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