Health workers trained in perinatal death audit
Health workers from six health facilities in the Greater Accra Region have been trained on how to effectively conduct perinatal death audits to facilitate the evaluation of factors that lead to such deaths for remedial actions to be taken.
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A perinatal death is any death occurring between 28 completed weeks of pregnancy and seven days after delivery, and it is caused by a complex interaction of economic, financial, social, cultural and service access and quality factors.
According to Dr Ebenezer Oduro, the Head of the Out-Patient Department of the Ridge Regional Hospital in Accra, a perinatal death may be the death of a live-born baby occurring within seven days of birth, referred to in medical terms as early neonatal death, or a baby delivered without signs of life after 28 weeks of pregnancy, also known as stillbirth.
He explained that it had become necessary to improve perinatal audits because the quality of services within facilities remained problematic, and is considered to be partly responsible for the persisting high neonatal mortality rate (NMR) of 30 per 1,000 live births.
Dr Oduro-Mensah cited, for instance, that in the Greater Accra Region, 95.7 per cent of pregnant women have access to antenatal care (ANC) and 84.3 per cent delivered by a skilled service provider, yet institutional death rates had not decreased.
The main purpose of perinatal death audit, therefore, is to identify factors contributing to the deaths in order to plan and formulate policies for the improvement of maternal and neonatal health services, he said.
In view of this, the Ministry of Health strongly recommends the formation of audit committees at all health institutions, especially first, second and third referral levels.
So far, six training sessions have been organised for health staff at the Ridge Regional hospital, Tema General Hospital, LEKMA Hospital, La General Hospital, Achimota Hospital and Shai Osudoku Hospital.
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The training was attended by doctors from obstetrics and paediatrics departments, midwives, general nurses and other clinical and non-clinical staff.
Facilitators were drawn from the regional maternal death audit team supported by the regional director of health services and a public health physician.