Midwives have been urged to change their perceived negative attitude towards pregnant women during ante natal care sessions to make health facilities more receptive to clients.
The National President of the Government Registered Midwives Group (GRMG), Ms Hawa Amoako Agyei, who made the call at the inauguration of the Eastern Regional chapter of the group in Koforidua, said the role of midwives was crucial in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
She said reported cases of nagging, shouting on pregnant women and other unwelcome treatment meted out to them at the health facilities were preventing pregnant women from accessing healthcare.
Ms Amoako Agyei appealed to members of the group to erase that notion by exhibiting more professionalism in their work.
She urged the group to move away from just attending to pregnant women in the hospitals to adopting them as clients who they would visit in the homes to familiarize themselves with problems that put them at risk and how to manage them.
She said the group was formed out of concern of the alarming rate of maternal death.
She said contrary to perceptions that the group wanted to separate themselves from the national body of nurses, their interest was rather to partner government to achieve the MDGs that dwelt extensively on reduction of maternal deaths.
Ms Amoako Agyei appealed to the Ghana Health Service (GHS) to equip all public maternal institutions with modern gadgets, especially monitors to transform the work of midwives to present day needs.
Dr Ebenezer Appiah-Denkyirah, Director of Human Resource of the GHS who inaugurated the group, said the issue of maternal mortality was a worldwide concern because measure of development of any country by the World Health Organization (WHO) was based on the rate of maternal mortality.
He said the formation of the group was long overdue since the GHS and the WHO had all been looking forward for a body such as the GRMG to strategize to reduce maternal mortality drastically in the country and assured the group of the GHS support in every step they would embark on.