ABSTRACT

This chapter offers a model that some high resource countries are now trying to re-invent, that is, a model where traditional/community and hospital midwifery work together in a healthy symbiotic relationship. The Philippines is considered to be the Asian country from which one can become most informed on the “decentralization process”. In this process, rural municipalities gained control of rural health stations and were required to have one physician and one nurse, while more remote clinics were required to have at least one midwife. Because the country had run on deficit spending and this decentralization process was only part of general public service reforms in the 1990s, it included devolution and privatization of some health services, and was one of six countries selected by WHO and the International Labour Office to study the effects of such reforms on health care workers.