"...Midwives need accurate information to help them protect the health and well-being of women, babies, and families. They need strategies to fight poverty and the unequal treatment of women, and for working together and with other health workers towards health for all. We revised A Book for Midwives with these needs in mind. In this edition of A Book for Midwives, you will find: * information needed to care for women and their babies during pregnancy, labor, birth, and in the weeks following birth, because this is the primary work of most midwives. * skills for protecting a woman?s reproductive health throughout her life, because a woman?s health needs are important whether or not she is having a baby, and because a woman?s health when she is not pregnant affects how healthy and safe her pregnancies and births will be. * safe, effective methods from both traditional midwifery and modern, Western-based medicine, because good health care in labor and birth uses the best from both Western medicine and the traditions of midwifery. discussion of the ways that poverty and the denial of women?s needs affect women?s health, and how midwives can work to improve these conditions, because changing these conditions can make a lasting improvement in health. * suggestions for how midwives can and must work with each other, with other health workers, and with the larger community, because working together strengthens everyone?s knowledge and makes action to improve women?s health more effective..."