Maternal mortality rate still high

Saturday, June 5, 2010 (The Mirror Pg 13)

By Rebecca Kwei
Ghana has one of the highest maternal mortality rate in the world. The Ghana 2007 Maternal Health Survey revealed that about 451 women per 100,000 live births died in the country due to pregnancy, unsafe abortion or complications of labour (GSS 2007).
According to the 2008 Ghana Demographic Health Survey, the total fertility rate (TFR) in Ghana is as high as 4.0, but the modern contraception usage rate is quite low at 17 per cent among married women.
The use of modern methods slightly declined from 19 per cent in 2003 to 17 per cent in 2008. The modern method distribution among married women is as follows: Tubal ligation - 1.6 per cent; Pill - 4.7 per cent; Intrauterine Device (IUD) - 0.2 per cent; Injectables - 6.2 per cent; Implants - 0.9 per cent; male condom - 2.4 per cent and female condom - 0.1 per cent
Although the government of Ghana has made some gains in the area of reproductive health services, the low levels of family planning practices and in particular, underutilisation of long-acting and permanent methods continue to indicate a lack of information about reproductive health as well as lack of access to these methods.
To support government’s response towards achieving the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 5 of eliminating maternal deaths due to unsafe abortion in Ghana, a consortium of five agencies initiated a programme dubbed; Reducing Maternal Mortality and Morbidity (R3M) in September 2006.
The five agencies are EngenderHealth, Ipas, Marie Stopes International, Population Council and the Willows Foundation, all international non- governmental organisations that work to improve women’s reproductive health.
The R3M programme provide financial and technical resources that enable the government to significantly expand women’s access to modern family planning and comprehensive abortion care (CAC), reduce unwanted fertility and severe complications and deaths caused by unsafe abortion.
Additionally, it is working to help achieve the government’s contraceptive prevalence goal of 39 per cent by 2015; make family planning services, especially, long acting and permanent methods and comprehensive abortion care routinely available and utilised at all levels of the Ghana health system.
Furthermore, it aims at reducing mortality and morbidity due to unsafe abortion by 2015, by eliminating the majority of the severe complications and make abortion services available to the extent permitted by the Ghanaian Law of 1985, and to educate providers and communities on the law.
The initial three-year phase of the R3M programme ended in December 2009 and was implemented in three regions namely; Greater Accra, Eastern and Ashanti regions.
According to Mr Placide Tapsoba, Country Director of the Population Council, the organisation that co-ordinates the activities of the R3M, the consortium members have met their original objectives of training, promoting community behavioural change, and the use of long acting or permanent family planning methods and providing comprehensive abortion care in both private and public health facilities.
Mr Tapsoba indicated that, the second phase of the programme will run from January 2010 to December 2011.