WHO to support Ministry of Health develop maternal mental health policy

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has pledged to support the Ministry of Health (MoH) and the Ghana Health Service (GHS) to develop a comprehensive policy to address maternal mental health issues.

A Technical Officer, Maternal and Child Health, WHO-Ghana, Dr Martin Boamah, said the idea was to assist the ministry to draft and implement the policy as there was currently no direct policy that spoke directly to the issue of maternal mental health issues.

He said all stakeholders needed to come together to put in place the required policy to comprehensively address maternal mental health issues which continue to affect women in the country.

Meeting

Dr Boamah was speaking during a dissemination meeting for maternal mental health situation analysis for the northern zone in Bolgatanga in the Upper East Region.

The analysis was conducted by the Ghana Health Service (GHS), in partnership with the Ministry of Health (MoH), the World Health Organisation (WHO), the UK-Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (UK-FCDO), the Mental Health Authority, academia, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) among other partners.

It was attended by representatives from the five northern regions, namely Northern, Upper East, North-East, Upper West and Savanna respectively.

He said WHO believed that the availability and implementation of the policy was one of the ways to be adopted to holistically deal with the issue to protect women in the quest to fulfill their natural and physiological rights.

He expressed worry that often the emphasis was on addressing maternal mortality to the neglect of other conditions that led to morbidity among women, saying “therefore, it had become necessary for attention to be given to maternal mental health issues to save the lives of women with such conditions”.

“For the past decades, the emphasis has been on addressing maternal mortality issues with no dedicated attention to other conditions that affected women while pregnant” Dr Boamah said, adding that there was limited knowledge among health workers in relation to maternal mental health which needed to be addressed.

He said that WHO had a number of policies and guidelines on maternal mental health and would provide the needed technical support to assist the MoH to develop the policy for their mutual benefit.

Integrated policy

A lead consultant to the WHO, Dr Promise E. Sefogah, said the study was done due to the fact that Ghana did not have an integrated maternal mental health policy to enable the provision of needed care to patients.

He said the study found out how maternal mental health was a problem and what can be done to integrate it into the regular routine maternal care for pregnant women in the country.

Giving specifics, the consultant said the report found that depression in pregnant women and those who had delivered was very high, stressing “maternal mental health disorders lead to complications that affect the mother and the child as well”.

Dr Sefogah called on the MoH to hasten steps towards the crafting and implementation of the policy so that pregnant women would be adequately screened for early detection and treatment to optimise the outcome of pregnancy.