Woman power in Nepal’s health sector
Feminist development policy stands for justice and cohesion – as well as better outcomes.
Nepal is striving for gender equality – and seeking to overcome structural inequalities. One particular focus is the health sector. Here, in particular, professional midwifery training still falls below international standards. This not only affects staff in the female-dominated profession, the resulting shortcomings in health care also have an impact on mothers and babies.
In the past, the lack of hands-on training and experience in medical emergencies increased the risk of midwives and other health care professionals committing medical malpractice. The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH therefore joined forces with a provider of medical simulation technology, Laerdal Medical India Pvt. Ltd. They joined forces to improve the quality of maternal and newborn health care. The integration of patient simulators into training enables midwives, nursing staff and doctors to acquire key skills under realistic conditions and without putting patient health at risk. By the end of the three-year project, more than 85 percent of the prospect midwives were using the patient simulators.
As Dr Rashmi Aradhya, Director Impact & Healthcare Simulation at Laerdal Medical, explains: ‘Simulation-based training helps health care providers to become competent and confident to provide high-quality health care services.’
Feminism in action
GIZ promotes feminist development policy on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). During the course of the project in Nepal, simulation-based training was successfully integrated as a core element into national curricula. The project provided training for more than 1,000 students of midwifery, medicine and nursing, as well as health care professionals. Nepal can therefore see how woman power is driving transformative development to improve justice in the health sector.
The project involving Laerdal was implemented as part of the develoPPP programme, which promotes sustainable business initiatives that create long-term improvements for local people.
