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The government has been urged to pay urgent attention to key interventions that would improve the lives of women and children across the country.
With less than five years remaining to achieve the World Health Organisation (WHO) target of reducing maternal deaths to 70 per 100,000 live births and ending preventable deaths of newborns and children under five—particularly by reducing neonatal mortality to at least 12 deaths per 1,000 live births by 2030—stakeholders are being called upon to accelerate investments in critical areas to meet the goal.
The call was made by the World Health Organisation (WHO) Country Representative, Dr Frank Lule, at an event held yesterday to commemorate World Health Day, under the theme: ‘Healthy Beginnings, Hopeful Futures.’
The theme, which launches a year-long campaign, focused on maternal and newborn health, aims to rally governments and health stakeholders to intensify efforts to eliminate preventable maternal and newborn deaths, while also prioritising the long-term health and well-being of women.
Currently, close to 300,000 women lose their life due to pregnancy or childbirth each year, while over two million babies die in their first month of life and around two million more are stillborn.
That translates to roughly one preventable death every 7 seconds, each day worldwide.
According to the WHO, a staggering four out of five countries are off track to meet targets for improving maternal survival by 2030, adding that one in three will fail to meet targets for reducing newborn deaths.
In Ghana, maternal mortality ratio presently stands at 263 per 100,000 live births, way above the WHO recommendation, necessitating the need to accelerate efforts at attaining the set WHO target by 2030.
“Let’s use this day as a call to action for us to achieve the targets that we set ourselves by investing in the health and well-being of mothers, newborns, children, and adolescents,” Dr Lule said.
He called for investment into areas, including antenatal care and life-saving care during and after birth, newborn care, skilled personnel, particularly midwives, as well as access to family planning and improving the hospital environment.
“We need to provide an environment that is respectful and that is attractive for all mothers to seek care, so I appeal to authorities to accelerate our response in maternal and child health because the first stages of life, beginning with pregnancy and extending through the early years of a child’s life, are fundamental to the eternity of future health,” he emphasised.
The Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, Professor Samuel Kaba Akoriyea, expressed the need for cooperation and partnership to build a seamless health sector that prioritises women and children’s health.
He outlined plans by the GHS in that direction, including strengthening health promotion and preventive activities, rehabilitation, palliative, and pathology services to the benefit of the citizenry.
“We are moving from seeing our patients as people who just depend on us to considering them as stakeholders. We have, therefore, developed the scorecards, community scorecards, to allow our clients to evaluate our performance at all levels, and I will keep special interest in looking at this from district to district, region to region, on a daily basis.
Together, we can dramatically change the story of maternal and child health as they relate to the achievements of the SDGs in fulfillment of the vision of a healthy population for a national economy,” he explained.
