Kini Nsom
20 August 2007
"Every pregnancy should be wanted and every child delivery safe. No woman should die giving life."
These slogans were sung many times recently by authorities as stakeholders galvanised efforts to dare the upsurge of maternal mortality in society on World Population Day.
According to statistics made available by the United Nations Population Fund, a woman dies every minute especially in Sub-Saharan Africa while giving birth.
In Cameroon, 669 women out of 100,000 women die due to child delivery complications. These figures are a clear testimony that maternal health care in the country is still in the doldrums.
A number of factors constitute the hoodoos of maternal health care in Cameroon. Such factors are socio-cultural and political in nature. Findings by experts indicate that many men in the African society think that maternal health care concerns only the women.
"It is unfortunate that men are always too ready to put their wives and girl friends in the family way, but do not care in what health conditions, they nurse their pregnancies or in what conditions they delivered," a maternal health care expert told The Post.
Besides, some men still allow their wives in certain villages to deliver at home in the hands of traditional doctors, thereby putting their (women) lives at risk.It was against the backdrop of such a situation that the United Nations Population Fund, UNFPA, put as theme "Men as partners of maternal health care" during this year's World Population Day.
The UNFPA Resident Representative in Cameroon, Dr. Faustin Yao, holds that population issues do not only centre on the number of people in a particular country, but how healthy they are and what their standard of living is. That is why the UNFPA is fighting hard with the Cameroon government to make sure that every youth is free of HIV/AIDS.
They equally fight against a situation where young girls are forcefully given out in marriage, insisting that education gap existing between young girls and boys especially in the northern part of the country should be bridged by way of enabling more girls to enrol in schools.
Dr. Yao states that the mission of UNFPA, as an international development agency, is to promote the right of every woman, man and child to enjoy life of health and equal opportunity.
He said his organisation is helping the Cameroon government to cure some of the headaches by using population data to reduce poverty. He holds that this can only become a concrete reality if all the stakeholders fight to ensure that "every pregnancy is wanted, every birth safe and every young person free of HIV/AIDS."
He cautioned that every girl and woman should be treated with dignity and respect in all circumstances. That is why the organisation has launched a fierce fight against maternal and child mortality.
They have also embarked in the fight against fistula that has been a nightmare for many women in developing countries.The ambitions of UNFPA are in tandem with UN Millennium Development Goals, MDGs, that are aimed at making life generally better for the peoples of the world by 2015.
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