International Day of the Midwife 2025: “Midwives: critical in every crisis”

Overview

The International Day of the Midwife (IDM) is observed globally on 5th May to advocate for investment in quality midwifery care around the world, improving sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health in the process.

International Day of the Midwife 2025

This year’s theme for International Day of the Midwife is: “Midwives: Critical in Every Crisis“. While midwives are vital to health systems’ ability to prepare for and withstand crises, they are often not valued and are excluded from preparedness planning and response efforts. This is the moment to position midwives as the essential health professionals they are and advocate for their inclusion at every step of crisis preparedness and response. For midwives to adequately respond, we must also ensure they are safe and are equipped with the training, tools, and resources they need to save lives and protect rights in the most challenging settings (International Confederation of Midwives).

Midwives can provide up to 90% of sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn, and adolescent health (SRMNAH) services, even during humanitarian crises. 

With minimal resources, midwives can: 

• Provide safe births, antenatal, and postnatal care, 
• Provide contraception, comprehensive abortion care, and care for survivors of gender-based violence, 
• Support breastfeeding, ensuring newborns receive safe, clean, and reliable nutrition, 
• Educate and prepare communities with the knowledge and tools they need to stay safe and healthy during emergencies. 

Key messages

• The evidence is in: investing in midwives saves lives, improves health and strengthens health systems.
• Increased investment in midwives could save up to 4.3 million lives every year by averting 67% of maternal deaths, 64% of neonatal deaths, and 65% of stillbirths.
• We are experiencing a global shortage of 900,000 midwives. Of the midwives we do have, substantial barriers are preventing them from achieving their full potential.
• To close the gap by 2030, 1.3 million new SRMNAH workers (mostly midwives and mostly in Africa) are needed in the next 10 years. Currently we are experiencing a global shortage of 900,000 midwives.
• There is a global needs-based shortage of 900,000 midwives. There is a shortage of all types of SRMNAH workers, but the largest shortage is of midwives.
• The midwife shortage cannot be filled by other occupations because there are global shortages of these other occupations too. More midwives would not only give more women, adolescents and newborns access to their unique skills, but would also free up doctors and nurses to focus on other health needs.
• The rate of progress in building the SRMNAH workforce is not improving at the rate required to meet SDG 3, and the gap between high- and low-income countries is projected to widen.

Related readings

• International Day of the Midwife (IDM):Follow the Data: Invest in Midwives
• The State of the World’s Midwifery 2021
• International Day of the Midwife 2019!
• International Day of the Midwife 2017