ABSTRACT
The midwife brings up the woman’s chart on the computer, glances quickly at the data recorded from previous visits, all normal, no cause for concern, and asks the woman, This chapter aims to sketch out a multi-layered scenario about birth and health that connects important everyday encounters between women and midwives to what constitutes the frameworks within which many national governments locate maternity services. It deals with a word about activism that may prove helpful to movements working to protect health as a common social good internationally. A private management consultancy firm was awarded an audit of the health services, and the findings, along with several other reports led to the launch of a Health Services Reform Programme to ‘modernise’ the health services, introducing the notion of an internal market. The under-regulation of the global corporate sector contrasts sharply with the over-regulation of health services and is a pressing matter for midwifery.
