WORKSHOP ON REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH HELD AT BUSUA (PAGE 40)

A FIVE-DAY national workshop on reproductive health has opened at the Busua Beach Resort in the Ahanta West District in the Western Region to map out comprehensive strategies to ensure a reasonable reduction in maternal and child mortality in the country.
At the workshop, each region in the country will give a presentation on any of the following topics— improvement on access to family planning services, strategies for improving skilled delivery coverage, as well as improving access to emergency obstetric and new-born care.
Other topics to be presented and discussed are on adolescent-friendly initiatives, school adolescent health initiatives, community initiatives in support of exclusive breast feeding, complementary feeding and general growth promotion, as well as scaling-up of Integrated Management of Childhood Illnesses (IMCI) training for middle-level service providers.
The emphasis on each of these areas will be on learning from best practices and will also be linking all the discussions to the road map for the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) four and five, for improved child and maternal health, respectively.
The workshop, on the theme: “Reducing maternal and child mortality: Scaling up best practices”, is being attended by senior medical officers, nurses and other para-medical staff of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) throughout the country, as well as development and implementing partners.
At the opening ceremony, the Director of Family Health Division of the Ghana Health Service, Dr Gloria Quansah Asare, said in April, last year, maternal mortality was declared a “national emergency” at a Health Partners Summit.
That, she said, was due to an increase in institutional maternal mortality from 186 per 100,000 live births in 2006 to 227 per 100,000 live births in 2007, with declines in skilled delivery and family planning and modest improvements in ante-natal and post natal care coverage.
“There was also a decrease in proportion of teenage registrants to ante-natal care clinics,” Dr Asare added.
Dr Asare explained that following the declaration of maternal mortality as a national emergency, a national consultative meeting was held in July, 2008 and that a Multi-Sectoral Ministerial Task Force for MDG5 was constituted to provide advocacy and follow progress on the improvement of maternal and neonatal health.
“Major areas requiring intense action were identified. These include family planning, skilled attendance, comprehensive abortion care and adolescent health and development,” she stated.
According to Dr Asare, the 2008 data showed a slight decline in the number of deaths and institutional maternal mortality ratios, adding that maternal deaths recorded in the institutions decreased from 996 to 960 last year.
She announced that the results of the maternal health survey carried out in 2007 were out and were being disseminated.
Dr Asare said the study determined the causes of death, utilisation of health services and other maternal conditions, adding “This will assist us to track our progress towards our national goals and the Millennium Development Goals four and five.”
Dr Asare said while ante-natal care, skilled delivery and post-natal care recorded improvements in trend, family planning use showed a decline in the period of the study.
The Deputy Western Regional Minister, Ms Betty Busumtwi-Sam, urged the health workers to strive towards a drastic reduction in the number of deaths during pregnancy and delivery, as well as during childhood.
She stated that policies and issues such as the girl-child education, adolescent health, free maternal care and the National Health Insurance Scheme were dear to the government and would ensure that those interventions were sustained and improved.
Ms Busumtwi-Sam also urged them to do sincere assessment of the current situation so that they would be in a better position to take decisions that could help them to improve on their performance.
The United Nations Fund for Population Activity (UNFPA) Representative, Dr Makane Kane, said the UN was prepared to support the country to document and scale up all the best practices that showed the potential of improving its maternal and child health indices.
He stated that the UN would do that with the government on the driving seat.
Dr Kane challenged the regions and the districts to take the initiative of bringing all partners together to develop comprehensive, integrated and co-ordinated regional and district health plans to scale up tested and documented best practices.
The acting Regional Director of Health Services, Dr Kwaku Anin Karikari, said the Reproductive Health Unit of the Ghana Health Service had for a long time been experiencing such periodic reviews which had ensured that strategies for reproductive and child health services were reviewed for better performance.
He said the development of national reproductive health policy and standards, as well as the strict adherence to the integrated management of childhood illnesses strategy, had improved standards in health care.
“This has enabled a gradual improvement in indicators of good maternal and child health care and status, even though we have a lot of challenges, especially in the area of maternal mortality,” Dr Karikari stated.