Nairobi (AFP) – Multiple African and Asian midwifery experts have been denied visas for a major international conference in Portugal, threatening progress on saving millions of babies’ lives, organisers and invitees said Friday.

The congress of the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM), held once every three years, starts on Sunday in Portugal, focused on reducing the 260,000 annual deaths of women during pregnancy and childbirth, and the 4.2 million babies who are stillborn or die in their first month.

But at least 20 key speakers from Africa and Asia – where the deaths are heavily concentrated – were refused entry to Europe at the eleventh hour.

The last-minute confusion meant many more delegates may also have been barred.

“I was ready to run a session on how evidence-based guidelines can keep women and babies alive in the harshest of conditions,” said Harriet Akello, midwifery director for Mother Health International, which operates in remote areas of Uganda, in east Africa.

“The world’s policymakers are in Lisbon, and here I am in Uganda, trying to explain to an embassy why I should have the right to travel,” she told AFP, adding that her visa was only denied on Thursday even though she applied more than a month ago.

Conference organisers said experts from Nigeria, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh and India were among those who had been barred entry.

“We need to hear from leading researchers, those at the forefront of tackling avoidable deaths,” said Kate Stringer, an adviser to the ICM.

“Every two minutes a mother dies. These visa rejections are silencing those we most need to hear from,” she added.

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