Maternal & Newborn Health Coordination Officer

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) is the lead UN agency for delivering a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person's potential is fulfilled.

UNFPA focuses on advancing women’s and young people’s ability to exercise their sexual and reproductive health rights. Since 1970, UNFPA in Pakistan has supported:

Sexual and reproductive health information and services;
Adolescents and youth;
Women’s empowerment and gender equality;
Population and development.
Our programmes expand across the country with tailored interventions for local contexts. We do this through:

Gender-responsive and youth-friendly policies, laws and initiatives;
Advocacy for increased investments in health and education;
Strengthened capacities of government and civil society institutions for youth-led sexual and reproductive health programmes and partnerships;
Alliances and strategies to reduce gender inequality;
Integrated and multi-sectoral approaches to population dynamics and its linkages to development;
Communication strategies that address social norms change;
Enhance government partnership with private and civil society sectors.
Working with government, civil society partners and other humanitarian agencies, UNFPA Pakistan advocates for the integration of gender and sexual and reproductive health issues by increasing awareness and commitment among policy makers, decision-makers and program managers and strengthening partnerships with national entities to improve coordination for effective preparedness and response.

UNFPA is aligned with national priorities (Pakistan 2025 Vision), the United Nations Sustainable Development Framework (UNSDF 2018-2022), UNFPA Strategic Plan (2018-2021), International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (SDGs) and Family Planning 2020 commitments.

The Government of Pakistan, through its National Health Vision Pakistan 2016–2025, aims to achieve Universal Health Coverage (UHC), with a focus on women and children. To meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, the targets are set to reduce the Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) to 70 per 100,000 live births and the Neonatal Mortality Rate (NMR) to 12 per 1,000 live births. However, Pakistan’s NMR was 41 in 2019 and 39 in 2021, the highest in South Asia and the second highest globally. Similarly, MMR stood at 140 in 2017 and increased to 154 in 2020, exceeding the regional average. This indicates a pressing need for further action to reduce mortality rates.

One major barrier to achieving UHC and SDGs is the acute shortage and imbalance in Human Resources for Health (HRH). The World Health Organization recommends a minimum of 23 doctors, nurses, and midwives per 10,000 population, while Pakistan had only 14.5 per 10,000 as of 2017. There is also a significant disparity in distribution, with the number of doctors nearly double that of nurses, midwives, and Lady Health Visitors (LHVs) combined. With a population growing at over 2% annually, Pakistan will need 874,000 additional nurses and midwives by 2030. Notably, while nurses largely serve urban curative roles, midwives often work in peripheral areas on preventive care, positioning them to impact maternal, neonatal, and child health (MNCH) outcomes effectively.

In response, the National Vision and Strategic Framework for the practice of Midwifery was developed in 2022 by a technical working group under the Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination. Key stakeholders included UNFPA, WHO, Health Services Academy, the Pakistan Nursing and Midwifery Council (PNMC), and the Midwifery Association of Pakistan. The framework calls for producing midwifery leaders, ensuring evidence-based and independent midwifery practice, developing educational institutions, fostering research, and establishing clear career pathways for midwives.

UNFPA has played a leading role in advising policy, revising midwifery curricula, and training faculty. To implement the framework nationwide, strong collaboration among development partners is crucial. JICA has supported MNCH efforts in Punjab and KP, introducing the Family Health Book initiative and training skilled birth attendants such as LHVs, community midwives (CMWs), and women medical officers (WMOs) in rural areas. However, these efforts remain limited in scope, and broader replication has been hindered by insufficient government ownership and budget constraints.

JICA’s international experience in institutionalizing midwifery education and improving service quality in maternal and child health across Asia and Africa could offer practical insights for Pakistan. To support implementation of the midwifery framework, JICA Pakistan is considering dispatching a MNCH Coordination Officer (UNV, ex-JOCV) to UNFPA’s Islamabad office, facilitating close collaboration with both JICA’s Pakistan office and its technical cooperation project teams

Under the guidance of Family Planning (FP) advisor and day to day supervision of Program Analyst Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH)- (Midwifery/Maternal Health), the UN Volunteer will undertake the following tasks:
Under the guidance of FP advisor and day to day supervision of Program Analyst SRH- (Midwifery/Maternal Health), the specialist UNV – MCH coordination officer is responsible to perform the following roles;
1. Support implementation and monitoring of The National Vision and Midwifery Strategic Framework in Pakistan.
2. Support development for educational institutions for midwives, including implementa-tion of Bachelor course in nominated universities, and upgrade public health schools for Lady Health Visitor (LHV), Community Midwife (CMW).
3. Support development for midwifery researchers which can integrate evidence-based research into Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (MNCH) practice, including collaboration with JICA utilizing long term train-ing/scholarship.
4. Support development of career structure and pathway for midwifery professions in-cluding bridging or merging program for different related cadre such as LHV and CMW.
5. Support in Preparing briefs, concept notes, monitoring reports, project updates, re-ports, summary notes of key results achieved, research findings of SRH /FP under poli-cy advocacy and quality of Care & services related initiatives.
6. Identify assets, good practice, resources and materials from JICA MNCH projects and promote collaboration between UNFPA and JICA, and other stakeholders as required.
7. Other tasks as required.

Furthermore, UN Volunteers are required to:
• Strengthen their knowledge and understanding of the concept of volunteerism by reading relevant UNV and external publications and take active part in UNV activities (for instance in events that mark International Volunteer Day);
• Be acquainted with and build on traditional and/or local forms of volunteerism in the host country;
• Reflect on the type and quality of voluntary action that they are undertaking, including partici-pation in ongoing reflection activities.
• Contribute articles/write-ups on field experiences and submit them for UNV publica-tions/websites, newsletters, press releases, etc.;
• Assist with the UNV Buddy Programme for newly arrived UN Volunteers.
• Promote or advise local groups in the use of online volunteering or encourage relevant local individuals and organizations to use the UNV Online Volunteering service whenever technical-ly possible.