Issah Alhassan, Kumasi
10 December 2007
The Ashanti Regional Minster, Mr. Emmanuel Owusu-Ansah has observed that the high prevalence rate of maternal mortality is a serious indictment on the country's quest to improving the quality of her human capital base and ensuring the socio-economic development of its people.
According to Owusu-Ansah current available statistics, which indicate that over 20 to 30% of maternal deaths in the country are as result of unsafe abortions, should be a matter of concern to each and everyone who has a stake in ensuring that the country's vision of attaining a middle-income status by 2015 is achieved.
The Ashanti Regional Minister, who expressed this concern in a speech read on his behalf at the official launching of the Sexual Reproductive health Programme by the Marie Stopes International-Ghana in Kumasi, noted that the unacceptable high levels of maternal and neonatal mortality was often aggravated by poverty, illiteracy, negative cultural practices, gender inequality, low priority given to women's health and other related factors.
He said it was not surprising that key international conferences, held under the patronage of the United Nations in the 1990s, underscored the need to improve women's health as a development and human rights imperative.
The Reproductive Health Programme, which was aimed at sensitizing the less privileged and underserved men and women on sexual and reproductive health education and to also develop a comprehensive family planning services, had as its theme "Pregnancy by choice not by chance" and was attended by nursing mothers and various stakeholders in the health sector.
The Minister noted that the loss of a woman through pregnancy shattered a family and threatened the well-being of surviving children and expressed the hope that safe motherhood interventions, when effectively and comprehensively applied, could dramatically reduce maternal mortality and morbidity.
"Experience from successful maternal health programmes, has shown that most of these deaths and suffering could be avoided, if all women had the opportunity to ensure that all pregnancies were by choice not chance," he emphasized.
He however, stated that the government under the second phase of the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS II) was implementing several programmes, which aimed at accelerating growth as a means of wealth creation, poverty reduction and equitable development and described the initiative by the Marie Stopes International-Ghana as a laudable one.
The Country Director of the Marie Stopes International, Faustina Fynn said the organization, which was established in London in 1976, provided sexual and reproductive health information services to five million people worldwide in 40 countries across Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East and revealed that Ghana was the second country where the programme was being implemented alongside Sierra Leone.
In an address, the Kumasi Centre Manager, Mrs. Peace Fianko observed that anyone who had been through the experience of pregnancy and childbirth, or seen someone else go through it, would not doubt the fact that they were life-changing events, and hence had to be planned well for the desired results to be achieved.
She expressed optimism that the launch would go along way to complement the efforts of the Ghana Health Service in addressing one of the key elements of the Millennium Development Goals, thus reducing the maternal deaths and illnesses.
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