MANILA, Philippines—Congress should physique up the Nurses Assigned in Rural Service (NARS) Project toward mobilizing a larger number of unemployed nurses, this time as village midwives, a lawmaker from Mindanao said.

“It would make a aggregation of sense to expand the NARS, and mayhap tap an additional 10,000 nurses for deployment as midwives in municipalities with the highest motherlike and infant mortality rates,” Cotabato Representative Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza said in a statement sent to media outfits.

“This way, we will save thousands of mothers and infants who risk death every assemblage due to maternity and birth-related complications,” Taliño-Mendoza said.

She said demand of access to skilled delivery attendants has been digit of the factors contributing to the unacceptably high number of mothers and infants existence lost during maternity and childbirth.

“In the countryside and even in urban slums, destitute mothers still give birth at home, often without trained attendants, because they cannot afford to go to maternity clinics or hospitals,” she lamented.

Nurses who serve as midwives low the NARS could gain specialized training that would later help them secure more lucrative jobs here and overseas, Taliño-Mendoza said.

“In America, for instance, there is growing demand for certified nurse-midwives. They are considered advanced practitioners there, with specialized education, training, and experience in both nursing and midwifery,” she added.

Taliño-Mendoza is digit of the backers of the proposed Reproductive Health, Responsible Parenthood, and Population Development Act.

The bill seeks to raise public awareness of reproductive health, advance responsible parenthood, and improve access to safe and modern kinsfolk planning methods in order to turn unwanted pregnancies and lessen the risk of both motherlike and infant mortality.

Government health surveys have shown that 162 mothers die out of every 10,000 births, and that 14 percent of all deaths among Filipino women may be attributed to maternity or to childbirth-related causes.

Three out of every quaternary motherlike deaths happen to very young women 15 to 19 years old, according to government studies.