Just over a year ago, the Founder-President of the Wellbeing Foundation Africa was invited to be the inaugural Global Goodwill Ambassador of the International Confederation of Midwives. Since its inception in 2004, the Wellbeing Foundation Africa, under the leadership of Her Excellency, Mrs. Toyin Saraki, has always known the invaluable role midwives play in changing health outcomes for women and children. From the beginning, midwives, have always been placed at the center of WBFA policies.

In 2010, the Wellbeing Foundation Africa lobbied for the passage of the Kwara State Safe Maternity Services bill - the first of its kind - that guaranteed funding for midwives. In her role as ICM Ambassador, Saraki has met midwives from around the world - from Suriname to Lesotho, from the United States to the Czech Republic and will be visiting many more as she continues her World Tour of global midwifery associations. In addition, Mrs. Toyin Saraki and the Wellbeing Foundation Africa has been able to identify the challenges facing the profession, and the help they need to save the lives of more mothers and babies. This insight has informed WBFA frontline programmes, which have been designed to enable midwives to overcome key challenges.

From the Alaafia Universal Health Coverage Fund (AUHCF) that provides affordable health insurance for patients, thus ensuring healthcare professionals like midwives are paid for their services, to the WBFA Midwives MamaKits, which provide all the necessary health commodities that midwives need to transform any incidental birth location to a fully equipped facility, WBFA aims to support midwives at every juncture.

The Wellbeing Foundation Africa has also worked with international partners like Johnson & Johnson and the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine to train midwives and other healthcare professionals in Kwara state, Nigeria, in emergency obstetric and newborn care.

This insight has also informed the Wellbeing Foundation Africa's global advocacy for the increased accessibility, availability, acceptability and quality of midwifery around the world. Using its global voice and new consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), WBFA seeks to garner further international investment in midwife training, and call for the rapid inclusion of skilled midwives at the heart of government and international policy on maternal and newborn health - particularly, in this pivotal year which will see the finalisation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Crucially, midwives play a significant role in combating the major social determinants of health, which affect the survival rate of mothers and infants. Socio-economic status continues to impact the likelihood of women receiving skilled care during childbirth as, globally, the richest 20% of women are 2.7 times more likely than the poorest 20% to have a skilled birth attendant during childbirth. Moreover, 84% of the poorest people have access to a skilled birth attendant compared to 95% of the richest people.

In Nigeria for instance, 14% of pregnant women give birth completely alone, without even a family member present. This is a trend that is actually getting worse in rural and poverty stricken areas, as in the case of the Northwest of Nigeria, where there was a 27% increase in the number of women giving birth completely alone.

Considering that northern Nigeria suffers from the highest maternal mortality rates in the country, scaling up access to skilled birth attendants, like midwives in rural and poverty-affected areas must be a priority to ensure that mothers- regardless of their socio-economic status are no longer giving birth by themselves.

Ensuring that mothers no longer feel alone and alienated whilst pregnant requires open communication and Respectful Maternity Care from a skilled midwife.

The Wellbeing Foundation Africa believes that effective health communications can break down these misconceptions and empower women to seek the help that they need. Overcoming this will require communications training for healthcare professionals around the world that can not only ensure that women are listened to, but are fully aware of what they need, and what they are entitled to.

This is the very foundation of Respectful Maternity Care - making sure that mothers are heard, informed, and empowered. Midwives trained with these skills can provide the Respectful Maternity Care that every single woman deserves and needs, in every village, every town, every city, and every country across the world.

Nonetheless, the midwifery profession faces a number of issues including a severe shortage of staff, poor working conditions, poor remuneration, limited support and supervision. As she continues her work as Global Goodwill Ambassador, the Wellbeing Foundation Africa Founder-President, Mrs. Toyin Saraki, pledges to advocate on behalf of midwives during the new era of Sustainable Development and remains committed to calling for increased investment in and access to midwives, in order to end to the needless and preventable deaths of women, newborns, and children by 2030.