Dr Sebalda Leshabari
Executive Secretary, Tanzania Midwives Association
Senior Lecturer, Muhimbili University of Health, Tanzania
Dr. Sebalda Leshabari is a leader in midwifery education, practice and research at the Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS) in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where she is a Senior Lecturer and General Secretary for Tanzania Midwives Association.
She completed her PhD in Maternal, Newborn and Child Health at the University of Bergen in Norway. Her post-doctoral degree was in monitoring and evaluation methods at the Harvard School of Public Health, U.S.A. She has been teaching Maternal, Newborn and Child health to Midwives for about 30 years now. She has led several projects for teaching rural, unsupervised midwives for them to provide quality midwifery care.
Dr. Leshabari has led several research and consultancies including: Scope of Midwifery Practice in Tanzania mainland including Zanzibar, which involved adapting the 2011 ICM Midwifery Competencies into the Tanzanian context. She conducted assessment of midwifery pre-service training activities in Ghana, Ethiopia and Malawi. She was a country team leader for the ICM field testing study of the provisional Essential Competencies for Basic Midwifery Practice.
She conducted a consultancy for the East Central and Southern Africa (ECSA) on documentation of best practices in retention of health workers, including those in reproductive health and family planning in Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania. Dr. Leshabari has worked with the World Health Organization on the handbook for counseling and communication in maternal and neonatal health, and in the review of the WHO Tools for Integrated Management of Pregnancy and Childbirth (IMPAC), as well as Essential Care Practice Guide for Pregnancy, Childbirth and Newborn Care (ECPG).
