Campaign on safe delivery begins

Saturday, June 25, 2011 (The Mirror Pg 13)

By Rebecca Kwei
THE Ghana Health Service (GHS), in collaboration with the USAID Behaviour Change Support (BCS) project, has started a campaign to educate the Ghanaian public, especially women, on birth and emergency preparedness.
This is to ensure that women have healthy pregnancies and safe delivery.
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).
Statistics show that women in sub-Saharan Africa have a one in 22 chance of dying in childbirth, compared to only one in 4,800 for women in the United States.
As part of the project, the Greater Accra Regional Directorate of the GHS has embarked on series of educational programmes to reach out to as many women as possible for them to understand the issues of maternal health and safe motherhood.
Maternal health refers to the health of women during pregnancy, labour and after birth. Pregnancy and childbirth have an enormous impact on the physical, mental, emotional and socio-economic well-being of women and their families.
A release from the Greater Accra Health Directorate identified the main causes of maternal death as delays in recognising danger signs in pregnancy, labour and after birth; delays in making decisions to seek care; delays in reaching health facility; and delays in receiving care.
The release said one of the things that women should do to stay healthy during pregnancy, labour and after birth so that they did not lose their lives was to attend ante-natal care early and visit the clinic as soon as they realised that they were pregnant.
That is to ensure that both baby and mother are well and also to detect and treat any problems early before they become serious.
Pregnant women should eat energy-giving foods such as maize, oil, rice, cassava and yam; and body building foods such as fish, meat, eggs and beans.
For protection against diseases, such women should consume enough fruits and vegetables, which include banana, pawpaw, mango, pineapple, okra, garden eggs and tomatoes.
There is also the need for expectant mothers to take the prescribed iron and folic acids until six weeks after the baby is born. These are blood-forming tablets and will help make the blood richer, make the woman stronger and healthier and make her sleep better. They also make the foetus grow well.
To avoid catching malaria during pregnancy, all pregnant women should take the malaria-preventing drug that will be given to them by health centres as soon as they feel the movement of the foetus. There is the need for women who take the malaria tablets to report to their health centres if they experience fever after taking them.
Another intervention which is important for pregnant women is tetanus injection, this is given once or twice to protect the mother and the baby from getting tetanus.
To have safe pregnancy and delivery, a pregnant woman should report to a health facility immediately she experiences severe headache, blurred vision and excessive vomiting, and finds that the inside of their eyelids are pale.
During labour, some of the danger signs which women should not ignore include vaginal bleeding before the baby is born; green, brownish or foul smelling fluid from the vagina, persistent and severe abnormal pain which is tender to touch; no movement of the foetus; fever; baby not born within 24 hours of being in labour; convulsions, which are signs of pregnancy-induced hypertension and the loss of consciousness.
The statement mentioned some of the danger signs a woman could experience after birth to include retained placenta and womb infection which could manifest as fever and chills; abdominal pains and tenderness; and also badly smelling discharge from the vagina.
It said women could help themselves and their unborn babies if they avoided drinking alcohol during pregnancy, stopped smoking or chewing tobacco or not expose themselves to poison as these could make the baby abnormal or underweight.
They are also to sleep under insecticide treated nets (ITN) to prevent mosquito bites, have enough rest and also do daily exercises such as walking to strengthen their muscles.