PERSPECTIVE Repositioning traditional birth attendants to provide improved maternal healthcare services in rural Ghana Umar Haruna 1 | Moses M. Kansanga 2 | Daniel A. Bagah 1 1 Department of Social, Political and Historical Studies, Faculty of Integrated Development Studies, University for Development Studies, Wa, Ghana 2 Department of Geography, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada Correspondence Umar Haruna, Department of Social, Political and Historical Studies, University for Development Studies, Wa Campus. P.O. Box, 520, Wa, Upper West Region, Ghana. Email: humar@uds.edu.gh Summary Following the World Health Organization's recommenda- tion for developing countries to discontinue the use of Tra- ditional Birth Attendants (TBAs) in rural areas, the government of Ghana banned TBAs from offering maternal health care services. Since this ban, community‐level con- flicts have intensified between TBAs, (who still see them- selves as legitimate culturally mandated traditional midwives) and nurses. In this articles, we propose a partner- ship model for a sustainable resolution of these conflicts. This article emanates from the apparent ideological discon- tent between people from mainstream medical practice who advocate for the complete elimination of TBAs in the maternal health service space and individuals who argue for the inclusion of TBAs in the health sector given the shortage of skilled birth attendants and continued patron- age of their services by rural women even in context where nurses are available. In the context of the longstanding manpower deficit in the health sector in Ghana, improving maternal healthcare in rural communities will require harnessing all locally available human resources. This cannot be achieved by “throwing out” a critical group of actors who have been involved in health‐care provision for many decades. We propose a win‐win approach that involve retraining of TBAs, partnership with health practitioners, and task shifting. Received: 28 February 2019 Accepted: 4 March 2019 DOI: 10.1002/hpm.2779 Int J Health Plann Mgmt. 2019;1–8. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hpm 1