Stakeholders discuss maternal health service delivery
A Principal Medical Officer (PMO) from the head office of the Ghana Health Service Directorate (GHSD), Dr Beatrice Heymann, has stressed the need for more attention to be paid to the delivery of maternal health care in the country, especially in northern Ghana.
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She stated that in order to prevent maternal and infant mortalities in the country, all stakeholders, particularly the private sector and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), must come on board in the provision and improvement of maternal healthcare delivery services in the country.
She announced that the country recorded 941 maternal deaths in 2014, while it also recorded 926 and 994 deaths in 2015 and 2016, respectively, and pointed out that that called for a lot more to be given to improve maternal healthcare services in the country.
Dr Heymann was speaking at a conference on improving maternal health service delivery through participatory governance (IMPROVE) that was organised in Tamale in the Northern Region by SEND-Ghana, an NGO.
Collaboration
Dr Heymann said the GHS would continue to prioritise maternal healthcare services in its facilities across the country in order to prevent needless maternal and infant mortalities.
She also said the GHS welcomed all support geared towards improving maternal healthcare provision in the country, and added that the management of maternal healthcare was a huge task that the GHS alone could not do.
For his part, the European Union’s (EU) representative at the programme, Mr Ernest Okyere, commended Send-Ghana and said the reports would help the players in the healthcare sector to evaluate maternal healthcare delivery services in the country.
According to him, although the country has made some significant improvement in the maternal healthcare services, the mortality rate is still unacceptable.
He, therefore, called for a close collaboration between a range of stakeholders to help fight the incident of maternal and infant mortalities in the country through an improvement in maternal healthcare services.
The conference, which brought together stakeholders in the health sector, was also used to present two reports that Send-Ghana has conducted on maternal healthcare delivery services in the three regions of northern Ghana: “Making safe motherhood a reality, the issue of financing” and “Halting needless death of women: The need for priority investments in maternal healthcare delivery in Ghana.”
Health reports
While the reports on “Halting needless death of women: The need for priority investments in maternal healthcare delivery in Ghana” is the first in the series of SEND-Ghana’s monitoring reports on maternal healthcare provision in Ghana, “Making safe motherhood a reality: The issue of financing” assesses the financial investment in the provision of maternal health services in the three regions of northern Ghana and its effects on the delivery of service.
The reports draw on a participatory research to offer analyses and lessons that can be tailored to Ghana’s healthcare provision context, constraints and opportunities available to tackle the issue of maternal death in a more systematic and sustainable way.
Recommendation
The reports recommended that “government should increase its financial commitments for investments and goods and services which support maternal healthcare and family planning services instead of depending on donor assistance by broadening its revenue base in order to have dedicated source to finance maternal healthcare.”
It also urged the Ghana Health Service (GHS) to make it mandatory for the District Health Directorates (DHDs) and facilities to consistently use defined percentages of their Internal Generated Funds (IGF) to support maternal healthcare.