Pregnant women need nutritious foods
Poor nutrition has been identified as a major cause of the high maternal mortality rate in the country.
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Women who do not eat nutritionally balanced diets during pregnancy tend to suffer anaemia and are also unable to build other nutritional reserves in their bodies, which affects them during delivery.
Health experts also say poor nutrition is more common among pregnant teenage girls than women because most of them are impregnated by irresponsible men and left alone to take care of their needs during the period.
Each year, hundreds of women in Ghana lose their lives during child birth, leading to Ghana scoring low as far as Millennium Development Goal 5 (MDG-5) that relates to improving maternal health is concerned.
The Ghana Health Service (GHS) reports that the Volta Region was among the three regions in Ghana struggling to attain the 50 per cent target for skilled delivery set under MDG5 as stated in the 2011 Ghana Health Service Annual Report.
Workshop on quality maternal healthcare
These came up at a workshop on quality maternal healthcare in Ho in the Volta Region under the "Open Ghana-Data Journalism for Improved Maternal Healthcare Delivery" project.
The workshop, organised by the International Institute of ICT Journalism -Penplusbytes, with funding and technical support from STAR-Ghana, brought together members of the general public, journalists, the Ho Municipal Assembly and representatives of civil society organisations (CSOs) and community-based organisations (CBOs) in the Volta Region.
The project is being implemented in four districts in the Volta Region – Ho and Hohoe municipalities, and Kpando and South Dayi districts.
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The workshop was to empower the media to use the techniques and innovations of data-driven journalism to write stories that would have the needed impact on maternal healthcare delivery and advocate better maternal health delivery.
It was also to serve as a platform for the media and CSOs to hold related agencies and individuals accountable in improving maternal health.
Three delays
Delivering a lecture at the workshop, the Dean of the School of Public Health, University of Health and Allied Sciences (UHAS), Dr Francis Zotor, said apart from the three delays attributed to maternal mortality that relate to seeking care, reaching the healthcare facility and receiving adequate healthcare on time, the issue of nutrition needed to be given equal attention because many pregnant women were not eating right.
He stated that although many women in Ghana now attended antenatal during pregnancy, some of them tended to lose their lives in the course of giving birth because their HB levels (blood levels) were low as a result of not eating nutritious food to boost their iron levels.
He, therefore, called on health workers to educate pregnant women on the kind of foods they needed to eat to remain healthy, adding that journalists should collaborate with health workers to generate compelling data-driven stories to support the fight against high rate of maternal mortality.
Superstition on nutritious foods
A representative of the Volta Regional Health Directorate of the Ghana Health Service, Madam Millicent Kokui Heloo, mentioned that the superstition attached to the consumption of some nutritious foods prevented women from taking them.
According to her, some communities prohibit the intake of meat, egg, beans or other foods containing protein during pregnancy and further cited a situation where some pregnant women refused to take snails because they feared their children would salivate.
She said the superstition only denied the pregnant women the protein, carbohydrate and fruits that would have enhanced foetal growth and also helped to attain healthy labour.
Madam Heloo appealed to civil society organisations and churches to help eradicate this bad mentality.
Use of condoms
The Queenmother of Ho-Dome, Mama Attrato, was much concerned about the rate at which some men had been impregnating teenagers, and advocated the use of condom if they were not ready to father children.
She also advised men to give their wives the necessary support during pregnancy.