Mexico's midwives enter the mainstream.

News Mexico's midwives enter the mainstream Training traditional midwives to work alongside doctors offers the best of both worlds to women giving birth in Mexico, writes Theresa Braine. Professional midwifery students receiving training from a traditional midwife about the use of herbs during pregnancy and childbirth. Sidelined during the 20th century in Mexico and other parts of Latin America, midwives are making a comeback. The new prevailing wisdom is to combine the efforts of doctors and traditional midwives in hospitals and clinics. The idea is to keep the use of modern delivery, such as stirrups and caesareans, to a minimum. " Around the world the midwife's role is diverse and evolving, " says Hed-wig van Asten, a technical adviser for the Making Pregnancy Safer department at the World Health Organization (WHO). " A midwife's responsibilities can vary depending on the setting, and can range from health promotion to emergency life-saving measures, " she tells the Bulletin. " It's a universal word that does not have a universal understanding. However, what is clear is that midwives can meet the clinical and cultural needs of mothers and newborns. " Within that context is a range of expertise and levels of training. While midwives are commonly deployed in Europe, in the Americas they went out of fashion in the latter part of the 20th century apart from in some rural areas of Latin America, including Mexico, where " traditional " midwives continued to practise and deliver the majority of babies. In recent years, a new breed of midwife in Mexico has emerged with the establishment of the Centro para los Adolescentes de San Miguel de Allende (CASA) school in San Miguel de Allende that offers a three-year degree plus one-year residency in professional midwifery. CASA, established in 1981, is Mexico's first government-accredited midwifery school. Now several nongovernmental organizations are also developing and running programmes that offer professional midwifery degrees. In a further development, Mexico's health ministry has started encouraging doctors to work closely together with traditional midwives. The department of Medicina Tradicional y Desarrollo Intercultural (Traditional Medicine and Intercultural Development) was established at the ministry of health in 2002. It is in charge of the national midwifery programme, which is designed to provide culturally appropriate care to Mexico's indigenous people with their preference for mobility during childbearing – as opposed to lying down with feet in stirrups. " We are a society with …