Increase awareness, support to reduce preeclampsia deaths - Dr Beyuo recommends in Parliament
The Member of Parliament for Lambussie, Dr Titus Kofi Beyuo, has called for increased public awareness and stronger healthcare support to help reduce deaths caused by preeclampsia among pregnant women.
He said the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimated that globally, preeclampsia affected 10 million pregnancies yearly, with 50,000 to 76,000 deaths.
Unfortunately, he said the burden was disproportionately high in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), including Ghana, where “in teaching hospitals, preeclampsia had overtaken haemorrhage as the leading reason why mothers died”.
“The LMICs bear more than 70 per cent of the global burden and this terrible condition is the second leading direct cause of maternal deaths worldwide and in Ghana, second only to bleeding causes,” he said.
Leverage free primary healthcare
In a statement he delivered on the floor of Parliament to mark the World Preeclampsia Day 2026 last Friday, Dr Beyuo urged the Ministry of Health and the implementing agencies to use the Free Primary Healthcare Programme as a vehicle to improve maternal health, especially preeclampsia.
“Implementing districts should identify women who develop hypertension in pregnancy and monitor them more frequently in the postpartum period because they stand a higher chance of developing chronic hypertension,” he said.
Hypertensive disorder
Dr Beyuo, who is a medical professional, said the theme for this year’s Preeclampsia Day, “Know her symptoms,” calls on the entire society to be aware of the disease and be familiar with the symptoms to protect all women.
He said the disease was a hypertensive disorder in pregnancy associated with elevated blood pressure, protein in the urine and sometimes diseases in other organs in the body, such as the liver, kidneys, brain and more.
He said it could proceed to a complication called "eclampsia" when the woman develops convulsions, which often signalled an immediate end to the pregnancy, irrespective of the stage of the pregnancy.
“This may result in the delivery of premature babies with a reduced chance of survival,” he said.
No early-stage symptoms
The MP explained that preeclampsia occurred only in relation to pregnancy or rarely in a few days after pregnancy.
Its exact cause, he said, was shrouded in theories and myths and it was generally believed in the scientific world that it resulted from abnormal placenta formation.
Some risk factors, he said, included developing preeclampsia in a previous pregnancy, maternal obesity, getting pregnant at the extremes of the reproductive age (too young or too old at your first pregnancy), having a renal disease while pregnant, diabetes and other co-morbid conditions in pregnancy.
Like many medical conditions that stole life from their victims and from the hands of caregivers silently, he said preeclampsia in the early stages had no symptoms.
“It may only be diagnosed at that stage with elevated blood pressure and protein in the urine.
“If undetected and allowed to progress to severe disease, it may be associated with headache, pain in the upper abdomen, blurred vision, convulsions, liver disease and kidney disorder,” he said.
The medical doctor told the House that preeclampsia was better prevented than treated.
He explained that regular antenatal care and complying with the advice of caregivers were two of the ways to prevent preeclampsia and where prevention was not possible, pregnant women must ensure early diagnosis and management to prevent complications and optimise outcomes for both mother and baby.
Dr Beyuo added that Ghana’s maternal mortality was still unacceptably high (234 per 100,000 live births) and preeclampsia was a significant contributor.
To stem the tide, he urged the Ministry of Health and its agencies to ensure the availability of medical equipment, such as blood pressure monitoring machines, essential medical commodities and other diagnostics at all facilities.
