In September 2000, 189 countries agreed to work towards attaining eight of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The fifth of these goals seeks to reduce maternal mortality by 75 per cent from 1990 to 2015.
To reach this goal, Ghana needs to reduce its current maternal mortality from the current 350 per every 100,000 live births to 150.
Since 2000, a lot has been done by way of efforts at meeting the goal of reducing maternal deaths.
Some of the interventions that easily come to mind are free delivery for pregnant women, the National Health Insurance Scheme and the Millennium Accelerated Framework.
In some parts of the country, transport operators have volunteered to help pregnant women with free rides to health facilities when they are in labour.
In spite of the various interventions, Ghana’s ride towards 2015 is still off track, an indication that reducing maternal mortality goes beyond issues of providing health facilities and trained personnel.
Four years ago, the then First Lady, Mrs Ernestina Naadu Mills, launched the Campaign for Accelerated Maternal Mortality in Africa (CARMMA) on the theme: “No woman should die giving life: The role of local authorities”, to disseminate information on child and maternal mortality and seek solutions to these challenges at the local level.
At the launch of the dissemination of the CARMMA report and newborn health week in Accra last Saturday, President John Mahama tasked metropolitan, municipal and district chief executives to initiate programmes to ensure the achievement of MDG 5 and warned that the renewal of their mandates would be based on their performance and role in the reduction in child and maternal mortality in their respective.
The Daily Graphic sees the President’s admonition as a wake-up call for the assemblies to complement the efforts being made at the national level to reduce maternal and child mortality.
During the launch of the CARMMA and the subsequent tour by Mrs Mills of the districts, many pledges were made by the assemblies to help reduce maternal mortality.
We have not seen much by way of the redemption of those pledges.
The assemblies must commit more resources, for instance, to ensure motorable roads to health facilities, good nutrition for pregnant women and abolition of traditional beliefs that discourage pregnant women from using health facilities, even where they are available.
It is only when the need to reduce maternal and child mortality is brought home properly to the people at the local level that we can hope to make any meaningful progress to meet MDG 5, with only two years to the set date for its achievement.
As President Mahama said, “Any death is a death too many.”
We would like to add that a preventable death is one too many.
