Maternal mortality goes down in Greater Accra

The 2019 Annual Regional Health Sector Performance Review has established that although deliveries in the Greater Accra Region have increased over the years, institutional maternal mortality have reduced remarkably.

The review report indicated a reduction from 189 for each 100,000 live births in 2017 to 145 in 2018 and reduced again to 136.8 in 2019.

At a meeting to review the performance of the region for 2018 and deliberate on how to improve healthcare delivery, the Regional Director of Health Services, Dr Mrs Charity Sarpong, said the achievement could be attributed to several interventions that had been put in place and “to the hard work of our staff”.

It has also been a platform to assess the resilience of the health system in respect to its mandate of providing quality health services to all persons irrespective of their geographical, financial, ethical, religious or other affiliations.

The Greater Accra review meeting for 2019 was held on the theme: “Strengthening Health Systems Towards Attaining Universal Health Coverage: The Role of Quality Data and Good Governance.”

Interventions

Dr Sarpong mentioned some of the interventions to include a Whatsapp platform named the “Kyebele Whatsapp” which facilitated the referrals of pregnant women requiring emergency or advanced care from one health facility to another.

She said the auditing of all maternal deaths both at the facility level and also by a committee that had been instituted to investigate all maternal deaths with the aim of identifying and addressing any shortfalls, including supportive supervision, monitoring and capacity building, also contributed to the reduction in maternal mortality.

Neonatal mortality

However, Dr Sarpong said the report also indicated a slight increase in neonatal death from six in every 1,000 live births in 2017 to 6.5 in 2018 and to 7.5 in 2019.

“Stillbirth rate has also reduced marginally from 15.3/1,000 live births in 2017 to 14/1,000 live births during the same period in 2018 to 13.6/1,000 live births in 2019,” she said.

Dr Sarpong said the situation could be as a result of low patronage of Prevention of Mother-To-Child Transmission (PMTCT) services during the year under review and, therefore, efforts had been made to integrate PMTCT services into the routine maternal and child health services.

“By this, midwives offering focused antenatal and neonatal care services were trained to provide testing, counselling and treatment as a one-stop service at their facilities,” she stated.

Challenges

Dr Sarpong said the Greater Accra Regional Health Directorate had set an agenda to strengthen healthcare systems within the region to help accelerate national efforts to deliver on UHC.

In doing that, it intended to prioritise quality data management and good governance because the two were established to be among the major challenges of quality healthcare delivery in the region by the 2019 Annual Regional Health Sector Performance Review.

She mentioned other interventions to include capacity building on the data management and governance, supportive supervision; maternal and newborn health; infection prevention and control practices, and the Community-Based Health Planning and Services implementation, with support from the United States Agency for International Development.

Accountability

In a speech read on his behalf, the Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, said the annual performance review was the demonstration of the health sector’s willingness to avail itself for accountability.

He said for the third year running, the national regional peer review used a holistic and transparent assessment tool leading to authentic assessment of regional performance.

He underscored the need for a more responsive and coordinated health delivery system towards the delivery of UHC.

Writer’s email: doreen.andoh@graphic.com.gh