Central Region makes strides in reducing maternal mortality

The Central Region has recorded a celebrated reduction in maternal deaths with a maternal mortality ratio, reducing from 109/100,000 live births in the year 2020 to 104/100,000 live births in 2021.

Additionally, the region also recorded a marginal reduction in stillbirth from 13.3 per cent to 12.7 per cent as teenage pregnancy slides from 11.8 per cent to 11.6 per cent over the same period.

Dr Mrs Akosua Agyeiwaa Owusu-Sarpong, the Regional Director of the Ghana Health Service, disclosed this at the 2021 Central Regional health sector annual performance review meeting held in Cape Coast on Tuesday.

It was held on the theme: “Strengthening institutional systems, improving service performance and attaining excellence in maternal and child health service delivery in the midst of COVID-19: The role of stakeholders.”

Dr Owusu-Sarpong commended the relentless dedication, commitment and collective engagement of all stakeholders in health care service delivery for the tremendous health successes.

She cited the collective engagement with all stakeholders for the achievements, saying the Regional Health Directorate had launched a three-year initiative to address the recurring challenges of maternal and child health mortalities.

Through the initiative, the Region had successfully implemented some key activities, including continuous surveillance on maternal deaths through the adoption of maternal death tracker and capacity building of staff on safe motherhood.

Others were lifesaving skills, strict supervision of maternal health services by specialists and community engagements.

As part of efforts to sustain the gains and improve quality services, Dr Owusu Sarpong said the region had adopted an Integrated Supportive Supervision of all facilities with the support of partners.

“Through these efforts, we have improved in most of our indicators, our aggregate holistic assessment scores improved from 3.6 in 2020 to 4.1 in 2021, making the region a high performing region.”

” We, additionally, improved in areas of childhood immunization, family planning services and HIV services,” she added.

A speech read on behalf of Dr Patrick Kuma Aboagye, the Director-General of the Ghana Health Service by Dr Peter Obiri Yeboah, commended the region for the willingness to hold itself accountable to various stakeholders on its past performance.

Incidentally, he said, the year 2021 served as a watershed, as it marked the end of the Health Sector Medium Term Development Plan (2018-2021) heralded by the National Health Policy (NHP).

That provided the country’s roadmap for attaining Universal Health Coverage (UHC) as a guide to the new Health Sector Medium Development Plan (HSMTDP 2022-2025).

He acknowledged that although the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic affected the implementation of health plans, budgets and programmes of work, some significant achievements were made to deliver quality and affordable healthcare to the Ghanaian citizenry.

“Notably, public health laboratory testing sites have increased from two to 60; our capacity to manage infectious diseases had significantly improved in terms of public health surveillance and clinical response and critical case management.

“We, as a service have taken the necessary steps to institutionalize the gains by setting up a national committee to collate, document and disseminate a guideline to assist health institutions in sustaining the gains made.”

“This clearly is an opportunity amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and this certainly would enable health directorates to respond appropriately to future outbreaks by reactivating these strengthened systems,” he said.