SEND-Ghana launches report on maternal healthcare
In 1987, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and other United Nations agencies such as UNICEF launched the Safe Motherhood Initiative, which was accepted in Ghana.
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Since then, several Safe Motherhood programmes have been and continue to be implemented in Ghana. In 1998, the Government of Ghana introduced free antenatal care for all pregnant women and in September 2003, a policy of exempting all users from delivery fees in health facilities was introduced. Thus, financial barriers to accessing antenatal and delivery care services in public and private health facilities were removed.
As a signatory to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Abuja Declaration, which enjoins nations to, among other things, reduce maternal mortality and devote 15 per cent of their annual budget to healthcare, Ghana has implemented a number of interventions, including the MDG Accelerated Framework (MAF) and Roll Back Malaria, to address maternal healthcare challenges.
Current pace of progress
Yet, the current pace of progress suggests that Ghana is unlikely to attain the MDG 5, which calls for reducing the maternal mortality rate by three-quarters by 2015. It is, consequently necessary to assess the progress towards the achievement of the goal.
SEND–Ghana, a non-governmental organisation, has stressed the need to step up efforts to assess the utilisation of budgets allocated to maternal health services.
According to the organisation, this will make it easier to track the disbursement of such budgets and also empower citizens to hold the government accountable for all projects and other initiatives.
Speaking at the launch of the first in the series of SEND-Ghana’s monitoring reports on maternal healthcare provision in Ghana, titled: “Halting Needless Death of Women: The need for priority investments in maternal healthcare delivery in Ghana,” the Chief Executive Officer of SEND West Africa, Mr Siapha Kamara, said though reducing the maternal mortality rate was a difficult task, there was the need to put in much effort to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, which would end next year.
The report draws on a participatory research to offer analyses and lessons that can be tailored to Ghana’s healthcare provision context, constraints and opportunities available to tackle the issue of maternal death in a more systematic and sustainable way.
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Other speakers
In his presentation, a lecturer of the School of Public Health of the University of Ghana, Dr Ernest Maya, said the government should take up the initiative of providing the resources needed for the various maternal healthcare rather than depending on assistance from donors.
He said the Ghana Health Service should make it mandatory for health facilities to use some of their internally generated fund to support maternal healthcare.
The Head of Planning and Budget at the Ghana Health Service, Mr Kwame Quandahor, said inadequate equipment and infrastructure was a major problem hindering efforts at achieving the good results in maternal healthcare.