INTRODUCTION Pakistan at present is facing the challenge of achieving the millennium development goals 4 & 5 to reduce the child and maternal, mortality & morbidity rate up to 2015. An estimated 350 to 550 Pakistani women die for every 100,000 live births. Pakistan's high maternal and infant mortality rates reflect the country's shortage of trained health workers and its inadequate health infrastructure. Currently, more than 65 percent of women in Pakistan deliver their babies at home, and onl y eight percent of these home births are supervised by a trained attendant. Only 36 percent of Pakistani mothers currently deliver their babies with the assistance of a skilled birth attendant. Deaths among newborns, infants and children have not decreased in the past 10 years.1 There is global consensus on the need for skilled attendants at childbirth hence midwife specifically is the most appropriate health care professional for women during pregnancy, childbirth and the postnatal period. Fatima Memorial System has always taken a lead in initiating health sector reforms in the past and this time again took this initiative of training the present and potential health work force at Saida Waheed FMH College of Nursing. It is a unique model of public and private partnership to address the acute shortage of health work force. It is not only providing quality education and training to students enrolled in Diploma in General Nursing, Community Midwifery, Post Basic Diploma Courses, B.Sc Nursing (04yrs)Program and Post RN B.Sc (02yrs)Program but is also focusing on the professional development of the current public and private sector nursing staff and faculty, who are the nursing leaders of the future. Although the midwifery training is already being imparted to develop this cadre of health work force but the concerned stakeholders felt the need to have a comprehensive program in line with the practices laid down by the International Council of Midwifery .Thus a task force was constituted comprising of local and foreign nursing and midwifery experts.
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Source; USAID Report April -June 2008