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Spanish midwifery email discussion list

Today I have been working on establishing an email discussion list for midwives, students and others in Spain, so they can “talk” to each other about birth and midwifery care. There are several email lists operating already in Spain, but these tend to specialised, and I felt, after my last visit to Spain, that there needed to be a more general forum where people can contribute to talk about maternity care in the widest sense.

The main aim of the list will be to promote midwifery and natural birth. At the moment, birth in Spain is very medicalised, although there are some midwives offering home births in some locations. I hope that by encouraging people to talk to each other about what is happening around the country, a better sense of midwifery care will develop and that effective networking can help midwives create a pressure for change, whilst supporting the efforts being made.

The list will operate mainly in Spanish. Over recent years there has been a huge influx of English speaking people into Spain (the weather is very nice!), and some of these have been midwives. I hope they will also contribute to the list discussions, in either English or Spanish as the language of birth is universal and women’s needs are much the same everywhere.

For the time being, we will support this list from our base in Sydney. Eventually I hope that a local midwife will take over the administration of the list (there is not much required) mainly because I don’t speak Spanish! At the present time I have a staff member, Patricia, who is a fluent Spanish speaker and qualified translator, so getting my message across in this foreign language is easy. This list is intended for Spanish midwives, so it would be good for them to take ownership when they are ready and willing.

In the meantime, I will be encouraging everyone with an interest in midwifery in Spain to join the conversation. This can be done quite easily:

1. Send an email message to: parteras-subscribe@yahoogroups.com Leave the subject line and the message area empty.

2. After your subscription has been confirmed, to contribute to the list, send your messages to: parteras@yahoogroups.com

3. To unsubscribe the list, send a message to: parteras-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com, leaving the subject line and message area blank.

If you are having problems with any of this, you can contact the list owners via regular email at: parteras-owner@yahoogroups.com

Posted by andrea at July 14, 2004 03:33 PM

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