Timor-Leste midwives get UN motorcycles in bid to slash maternal mortality

The United Nations has given Timor-Leste’s midwives 80 motorcycles in a bid to extend their reach to remote rural areas and cut the highest level of maternal deaths in the Asia and the Pacific region.

Expanding midwife services is among the main health objectives of the newly independent state and is particularly crucial in a country with a maternal death rate estimated at 850 per 100,000 live births, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) said. It is estimated that only one quarter of all deliveries in Timor-Leste are currently attended by a trained midwife, and increasing the number of midwife-assisted deliveries will help lower maternal death rates.

“The problem is that there are just not enough midwives in the country,” Daniel Baker, UNFPA Chief of Operations in Timor-Leste, said during a handover ceremony in the capital, Dili, last week. “Because the areas that the midwives service are often very extensive, with many remote locales, we can only make a difference if we can expand their outreach. That is what these motorbikes are meant to do – to give midwives, especially rural midwives, the opportunity to carry out more pre- and post-natal care visits and to enable them to reach women in remote locations at the time of delivery.”