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JOHNSON & Johnson Philippines Inc. and the Integrated Midwives Association of the Philippines Inc. honored the participants of the 6th Johnson & Johnson Midwives Leadership Development Program (MLDP) during the 35th IMAP annual convention in Quezon City recently.
The 24 MLDP graduates, representing the different regions of the country, were presented before the gathering of some 2,000 midwives from all over the Philippines.
Now on its sixth year, the program has been conducted in order to enhance the leadership skills of selected midwives and make them more effective in mobilizing their communities to work together for the improvement of the health and welfare of mothers and children.
“A recent study presented during the World Congress of the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics revealed that more than two million babies and mothers die worldwide each year from childbirth complications, outnumbering child deaths caused by HIV/AIDS and malaria,” Zinnia Rivera, Johnson & Johnson Philippines president and managing director, said in her remarks during the program.
“It is disheartening to know that many of the deaths could have been avoided with improvements in basic healthcare and training for local health care workers especially in countries plagued by poverty,” Rivera lamented.
“Here in the Philippines we are struggling with the ill effects of the brain drain. So we thought, if we can't raise the number of nurses and doctors, then the next best thing that we should do is to empower the assets that we do have. And these assets are none other than the midwives who are the healthcare frontliners of the nation,” Rivera pointed out.
The MLDP participants were immersed in an intensive three-day training conducted by the National Teachers Training Center of the University of the Philippines Manila.
The training involved honing the midwives’ abilities to plan, organize and maintain their health units; to communicate and effect behavior change in others; to conduct meetings productively; and to maximize their networking skills.
IMAP President Pat Gomez stressed during her remarks at the recognition ceremony the importance of developing the leadership capabilities of the midwives. She noted that “the skills gained in the duration of the activity will not only benefit the midwife but her entire health unit as well.”
“We have seen how previous MLDP graduates were transformed into bona fide leaders of their communities. They have gained a wider scope of their roles as midwives, and were able to step up more pro-actively to the challenges that arise in their areas,” Gomez added.
