Midwife Melese Ayalew safely delivered the baby of Efrah Ahmed at the Hiwot Fana Specialized University Hospital in Harar where he has been serving for the past 6 years.

Melese’s passion is to help pregnant women and mothers with love and dedication as a professional midwife. Melese provides various maternal health services including counseling and provision of family planning. He also advises women and their families to protect themselves from COVID-19 infection.

The COVID-19 pandemic is piling up a high volume of workload on frontline health workers like Midwife Melese. “Most of our staff have been infected with COVID and this is causing stress, fear and a high work burden on us,” says Melese. “Many pregnant women are being admitted without undergoing test for COVID-19. When they start showing symptoms of infection while being served, this causes psychological stress on staff and many staff on duty have been infected,” he adds.

With the support of UNFPA, the Ethiopian Midwives Association is providing personal protective equipment such as face masks, gloves and hand sanitizers to staff. These are helping midwife Melese and his colleagues to protect themselves from COVID-19 and deliver life-saving health services at ease.

(Source: Ethiopian Midwives Association)