GPA Launches Social Media Campaign

On May 5, International Day of the Midwife, and in the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic, GPA launched the social media campaign to the Spanish-speaking world #SinParterasNoHayComunidad (Without Midwives There is No Community).

The goal of the campaign is to raise the visibility of the essential and tireless work traditional midwives play in indigenous areas throughout southern Mexico, where they often are the sole caretakers of women and their families in their communities. As the more than 500 indigenous, non-indigenous and Afro-Mexican midwives who make up the Nich Ixim Statewide Midwife Movement of Chiapas declared on March 8, the more than 5000 midwives in Chiapas, Mexico help reduce the number of maternal and newborn deaths, while providing women respectful and dignified care. Nevertheless, midwives have continued to face obstacles to their work, a situation that is even more heightened with the onslaught of the Covid-19 health crisis, where even more women are choosing to deliver babies in their homes.

While working at the frontline of the pandemic, midwives have not received any protective equipment from the government, and some have not been given the permission to cross community borders in order to attend to their patients in the neighboring village, leaving these women to give birth alone. A number of other organizations are joining in! Take a look at the campaign on our Spanish-language Facebook and Instagram accounts.