Data investigation · Romanian statistics office, Eurostat, European Commission

Romania’s midwives: how many are left, and how many babies they still deliver

In 1993, one in eight babies born in Romania’s maternity wards was delivered by a midwife with no doctor present, and those births outnumbered caesareans. By 2023 a midwife on her own delivered one baby in 66, and for every such birth there were 34 caesareans. Pick the year you, or your child, were born.

Year of birth

Type a year between 1980 and 2025, or drag the bar.

In 1993, in Romania’s maternity units, one baby in 8 was delivered by a midwife alone, and 9 in 100 were born by caesarean. The country had 10,593 practising midwives, one for every 24 births.

1993 · Who delivered them

midwife alonedoctor and midwifedoctor alone

1993 · How they were born

caesareanvaginal birth

of 100 babies born in a maternity unit

When did caesareans overtake births handled by a midwife alone?#

In 1993, Romania’s birth records show 30,854 babies delivered in maternity units by a midwife with no doctor present. That year hospitals reported 21,561 caesareans. The two numbers drew closer every year and met in 1997: 25,918 midwife-only births, 26,192 caesareans.

Since then the lines have pulled apart. In 2023 a midwife on her own attended 2,421 births, while caesareans reached 82,299, or 51.2% of births in maternity units. For every birth handled by a midwife alone there were 34 caesareans.

The chart sets two different records side by side: births come from the statistical forms filled in when a birth is registered, caesareans from the operations hospitals report. The lines show what changed over the same years. They do not show that one caused the other: much else changed in those years, and obstetrics and gynaecology beds, for one, fell from 24,410 in 1990 to 8,380 in 2025. “Midwife alone” is a box on the statistical form; the medical certificate of birth is still signed by a doctor.

Who attends births in Romania?#

On paper, the midwife never left the delivery room. From 1993 to 2023, almost two births in three were recorded as attended by a doctor and a midwife: 62.5% in 1993, 65.7% in 2023. What disappeared is the birth a midwife leads on her own. Its share fell from 12.6% to 1.5%, while births attended by a doctor alone rose from 24.9% to 32.8%.

The form records who was present at the birth. It does not record what training the person listed as midwife had.

How many midwives does Romania have?#

In 1989 Romania had 12,479 practising midwives, according to the figures it reports to Eurostat. When it joined the European Union in 2007 there were 4,729. By 2024, 2,785 were left, 78% fewer than in 1989. The series has a break in 2007: until then only the Health Ministry’s network was counted; since then the private sector is included too, from INS data. Births fell too, but more slowly: in 1989 there was one midwife for every 30 births, in 2024 one for every 52.

Romania’s statistics office (INS) also publishes a narrower count: people employed in health units in the category “obstetric-gynaecology nurses (midwives)”. In 2004 there were 5,591. By 2025, 1,709 were left, 1,177 of them in state hospitals and 532 in private clinics. Over the same years the whole mid-level health workforce grew from 121,683 to 160,721.

Since 2007 both numbers come from the same INS survey, with different definitions. In 2024 the figure reported to Eurostat was 961 higher. According to Eurostat’s methodological note for Romania, it also includes nurses with specialist training who work most of the time in obstetrics and gynaecology wards. The gap may be those nurses, or midwives employed under other job titles; no public source gives the split.

How many employed midwives are left in each county?#

In 2004 every Romanian county had at least 39 employed midwives, in the INS category above. By 2025, five counties had ten or fewer: Vaslui 0, Tulcea 1 (12 a year earlier), Ialomița 5, Mehedinți 6, Vrancea 9. Vaslui had 39 in 2022, 2 in 2023 and none in 2024 and 2025. Cluj went from 223 to 21.

Choose a county

Or click the map.

Share of the 2004 number of employed midwives left in 2025under 10%10–20%20–35%35–60%over 60%no data

The count follows how people are employed: a midwife employed as a general nurse does not appear here. Sudden drops such as Vaslui’s may reflect people being moved to other job categories rather than leaving; the statistics do not say which. Each person is counted in the employer’s county, and clinics in Bucharest and Ilfov may have patients from other counties.

County	2004	2025	Change
Vaslui	112	0	−100%
Tulcea	72	1	−99%
Ialomița	90	5	−94%
Mehedinți	78	6	−92%
Cluj	223	21	−91%
Vrancea	90	9	−90%
Brașov	144	17	−88%
Gorj	85	11	−87%
Teleorman	93	14	−85%
Caraș-Severin	105	18	−83%
Satu Mare	87	15	−83%
Olt	110	19	−83%
Vâlcea	112	20	−82%
Galați	105	19	−82%
Brăila	114	22	−81%
Argeș	72	15	−79%
Sălaj	70	15	−79%
Giurgiu	57	13	−77%
Neamț	154	40	−74%
Bacău	165	43	−74%
Suceava	163	45	−72%
Alba	125	35	−72%
Călărași	71	20	−72%
Bihor	156	44	−72%
Arad	107	31	−71%
Buzău	161	49	−70%
Harghita	108	33	−69%
Constanța	208	64	−69%
Bucharest	550	172	−69%
Dâmbovița	94	30	−68%
Botoșani	97	33	−66%
Covasna	88	31	−65%
Prahova	189	67	−65%
Mureș	191	70	−63%
Timiș	170	64	−62%
Maramureș	151	58	−62%
Hunedoara	137	55	−60%
Sibiu	102	46	−55%
Bistrița-Năsăud	69	33	−52%
Iași	245	133	−46%
Dolj	232	179	−23%
Ilfov	39	94	+141%

Does Romania have the fewest midwives in the European Union?#

Yes, measured against births. In 2024 Romania had 19.4 practising midwives per thousand live births, the lowest ratio among the 26 EU countries that report it to Eurostat (each in its latest year). The Romanian figure includes obstetric-gynaecology nurses, so for midwives proper the ratio cannot be higher. Portugal (21.8) and Slovenia (24.8) come next. The middle of the table sits at about 48.

Definitions vary between countries, so small differences mean little; at the other end, Poland reports 114.5. The United Kingdom last reported to Eurostat in 2019, with 45.1 midwives per thousand births.

Did Romania’s midwives leave for other countries?#

European Commission records do not show a mass departure. Between 2007 and 2024 its database of regulated professions lists 140 applications to recognise the qualifications of midwives trained in Romania, 111 of them approved: 41 in the United Kingdom, 33 in Germany, the rest in 13 other countries. For nurses trained in Romania, the same database holds 33,207 records.

The database starts in 2007. By then Romania had already lost 7,750 of its 12,479 midwives of 1989, by a count whose definition changed that year. After 2007 the number fell by another 1,944, and the 140 applications cover only a small part of that fall. Reporting is incomplete (the UK stops appearing after 2019) and misses midwives working abroad in another job, so the figures do not show that midwives stayed. They show that recorded departures do not explain why they are gone.

How many babies are born at home in Romania, and who is there?#

In 1993, 4,767 babies were born at home in Romania, and at 2,010 of those births (42%) the only professional present was a midwife. By 2023 home births had fallen to 337, and a midwife alone attended 52 of them. For 191, more than half, the form lists neither a doctor nor a midwife.

The figures do not say whether these births were planned or unexpected, or how they ended.

Why can’t the birth figures for 2024 and 2025 be compared?#

Of all births in 2023, the records list 105,707 as attended by a doctor and a midwife. In 2024 there are 64,599, and in 2025 only 21,225. Meanwhile births attended “by a doctor only” rise from 52,813 to 112,272. It is hard to believe maternity units changed their practice that fast.

The jump coincides with a change in how the data are collected. In its quality report, INS writes that from 2024 “part of the birth statistical forms […] were completed through” SIIEASC, the new civil-registration computer system. INS does not say what happened to the attendance box, but a change this abrupt is more likely about how the forms are filled in than about maternity units. That is why the comparisons on this page stop at 2023: for 2024 and 2025 the official statistics no longer show reliably who attended a birth.

What is changing for Romania’s midwives in 2026?#

Midwifery is a regulated profession in Romania under Emergency Ordinance 144/2008, but a midwife cannot contract directly with the national health insurance fund (CNAS). On 23 May 2026, Senator Ruxandra Cibu Deaconu of the USR party and the Association of Midwives of Romania announced a proposal to change the law so that midwives are explicitly recognised as health-care providers and can contract directly with the fund. The press release does not mention a registered bill.

The letter Luiza Vasiliu published on the investigative site Snoop in July 2026, part of a series on birth in Romania, was built from the testimonies of almost 700 women. The figures here are what testimony cannot show: how few midwives are left, and how rarely one of them still delivers a baby without a doctor.

Where the numbers come from#

Who attended the birth: INS table POP201E (live births by place of birth and attendance, 1993–2025), births in health units only. Caesareans: Eurostat hlth_co_proc3 (hospital in-patient operations). Practising midwives: Eurostat hlth_rs_prs2 (series break in 2007), and births, demo_gind. Employed midwives: INS SAN104A (“obstetric-gynaecology nurses (midwives)”), by county, 2004–2025; a county missing in a year when the others add up to the national total is counted as zero. Recognition of qualifications: the European Commission’s regulated professions database. Beds: INS SAN102A. All tables were downloaded on 24 October 2026.

Ratios are computed from these tables without adjustment. Midwife-only births and caesareans come from different records; the ratio between them compares numbers published for the same year, not the same births. Data on who attended a birth exist for the whole country only, not by county.