text: care services and ensuring the presence of a skilled birth attendant (SBA) at every delivery, whether at home or in a health facility . Since the commencement of the National Safe Motherhood Programme in 1997, significant progress has been achieved in terms of the development of policies and protocols and expanding the role of staff nurses and auxiliary nurse midwives (ANM) in the provision of life saving services. In order to ensure a more focused approach within the programme, the Family Health Division, Division of the Department of Health Services developed the National Safe Motherhood Plan (2002-2017), which was revised in 2006 to take into account new developments and global learning. T his 15-year plan aims to establish basic and comprehensive emergency obstetric care services in all 75 districts. Complementing this, the National Policy on Skilled Birth Attendants (2006) aims to increase the percentage of births assisted by an SBA (as internationally defined) to 60 percent by 2015. This will require a substantial training effort in the next few years, with immediate strengthening and expansion of the number of training sites in the country to meet the required standards and training needs. This in-service SBA training strategy sets out the approaches and outline plans, in line with the SBA policy, for addressing the training needs for existing government staff nurses, ANMs and doctors to ensure they can be accredited as SBAs. The Government also plans to revise pre-service training curricula and standardise training institutions in order to ensure that all newly graduating nurses, ANMs and doctors can be accredited as SBAs. A strategy will be developed to guide the overall implementation ofthe SBA policy, including providing an enabling environment for SBAs.