Corporate organisations urged to set up crèches
The Minister of Health, Ms Sherry Ayittey, has suggested to corporate organisations to set up crèches to enable nursing mothers to devote more attention to their lactating babies.
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She said many working mothers were having the difficulty of exclusively breastfeeding their babies for the first six months as a result of the limited leave period extended to them.
Ms Ayittey, who was speaking at the annual reproductive and child health review meeting in Kumasi, noted that many working mothers were struggling to cater for those babies and was of the view that if these crèches were attached to their offices, they would go a long way to solve many of the problems these mothers faced.
The annual review meeting was on the theme: “Accelerating efforts in achieving the MDGs 4&5: Renewing our promise to the newborn.” MDG 4 is to reduce child mortality, while MDG5 is to improve maternal health.
She said there was the need for the ministries of Health, Gender, Children and Social Protection and Employment and Labour Relations to come up with a policy that would ensure that all work places had an adjoining crèche managed by nurses to enable nursing mothers to be able to breastfeed their children.
That, she said, aside ensuring that the children got the best attention and care from their mothers, would also give the mothers the peace of mind to work effectively and, thus, improve productivity, as against the divided attention they had at work during that period.
A task to managers of health facilities
She further tasked managers of health facilities in the country, particularly those in charge of child health, to strengthen their supervisory roles in order to safeguard the lives of newly born babies and their mothers.
Citing the recent incident of the missing baby at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) as an example, she said “Madam Suwaiba’s incident was a test case for us to improve on our supervisory roles at our hospitals.”
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She said it was not enough to report on the number of maternal deaths at their facilities but to go beyond the figures to investigate the causes of these deaths.
“If we want to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MGDs), we must investigate every maternal death to find the cause,” she stated.
According to her, the supervisors ought to know what the health workers, the nurses and midwives are up to at the community level by following up on their activities and ensuring proper supervision.
She expressed regret that in spite of the advancement made in the health sector, the country was still experiencing maternal and neonatal deaths.
The Ashanti Regional Director of Health, Dr Alexis Nang-Beifubah, said at the current rate, it would be extremely difficult for the county to achieve those targets.
Regional variations
He said there were wide regional variations in the achievements and “it is imperative that we study the report carefully and re-strategise for the final push. Let us study the causes of these regional variations.”
He said neonatal mortality accounted for 66 per cent of all deaths and 40 per cent of under-five mortality; adding that “Reducing new born deaths is key to achieving MDG4.”
“This is doable because the causes of these deaths and the needed interventions are well known and documented,” he said.
According to him, reducing newborn deaths calls for local, regional, national and, indeed, new global responses, taking into account the prevailing peculiarities.
Dr Nang-Beifubah further called for the need to build capacity at the district levels to identify risks and refer promptly.
“We need also to work essentially on improving quality antenatal care to include risk detection, strengthening and building the capacity of staff in hospitals to manage critical newborn crisis and promptly referring through the same seamless system,” he said.
The Deputy Director General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr Gloria Quansah Asare, said despite achievements and intensified efforts in many areas, the country continued to face several challenges.
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Inadequate human resources
She cited inadequate human resources, infrastructure, data capture, referral systems, partnerships and collaboration, among others as some of the challenges.
She said institutional maternal deaths increased from 905 in 2012 to 1016 in 2013, with an institutional maternal mortality ratio of 154 and 155 per 100,000 live births, respectively.
She said the proportion of death audited increased from 82 per cent in 2012 to 87 per cent in 2013.
According to her, while antenatal care was nearing universal coverage, skilled attendance at delivery, post natal care and family planning continued to lag behind.
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