During his conference speech last week, Johnson pledged to train more midwives and said the government has planned for an extra 1,000 by 2009. He added: "We will need more specialist nurses and health visitors to tackle public health issues in deprived communities."
The announcement comes as health workers' unions including Unite have been calling for more health visitors to be trained and put into the community, including in children's centres.
Unite says NHS statistics show that one health visitor post a day is being lost. The union also argues there has been a 40 per cent reduction in health training places in England during 2006/07.
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