April 12, 2024
A champion of maternal, newborn and child health. An advocate for global policies that prioritized lifesaving care for women. A respected physician colleague of midwives who counted himself as one of them. A supporter of West African health systems and their frontline workers. That is how Jhpiego colleagues remember Dr. Luc de Bernis, who spent his career in service of women and their babies and midwifery care in some of the most challenging places. We extend our condolences to his family, friends and colleagues who feel his loss personally.
Through his work for UNFPA and the World Health Organization, Luc was a close friend and a partner of Jhpiego. From Addis Ababa to Dakar to Geneva, we shared a mutual respect and goal, to advance ways to reduce the deaths of women and babies from preventable causes. His support of midwifery – and midwives – was well known and highly valued. As we established and promoted a national midwifery education system in Afghanistan, Luc was right there with us. Like Jhpiego, he actively participated in the development of the State of the World’s Midwifery reports, which chronicle the global contributions and needs of the profession and provide a call for collective action.
Luc’s commitment to improving health outcomes for pregnant women, mothers and their babies and his tireless work to achieve progress on their behalf should remind us of the work that remains to be done -- to ensure equity in health care and achieve a world where no woman dies needlessly in childbirth.

Dr. Leslie Mancuso
PhD, RN, FAAN
President and CEO

Leslie Mancuso- 12-04-24