Sri Lanka needs more Public Health Midwives

Introduction: Sri Lanka has a well-established Primary Health care system. One of the key players in the primary health system is the Public Health midwife (PHM) and as end of 2019, there were 7087 PHMs in the field service. Many health experts believe that existing number of PHMs in the system is inadequate. There had been on no systematic assessment of PHM workload.

 

Objective: This study attempts to identify the number of PHMs needed for the field service in Sri Lanka, to carry out the current programmes.

 

Methods: Research included desk reviews, consultative workshops and Workload Indicator Staffing Needs (WISN) analysis supplemented by use of One Health tool.

 

Results: Sri Lanka need one field PHM per 1878 population to meet the current service demands. Therefore, Sri Lanka needs 11,612 PHMs to work in the field, as end of 2019, indicating a short fall of 4525 PHMs.

 

Conclusion: In order meet the acute shortage at least 1000 PHM should be trained annually for a foreseeable period. Routinely PHM trainees are recruited from GCE Advance Level Bio-Science stream students. However as there is insufficient number of applicants, from Bio-Science stream, the Ministry should take steps to recruit PHM trainees from any GCE Advanced Level stream.