It is an undeniable fact that enhancing the quality of prenatal care is a fundamental move toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goals' targets set by the United Nations to reduce maternal and newborn mortality.
To improve the quality of health services for mothers and newborns and to achieve the desired goal, countries are undertaking a number of activities, including enhancing access to health facilities and providing healthcare services with skilled human power.
According to documents, from 2000 to 2020, the global maternal mortality ratio (MMR) declined by 34 percent - from 339 deaths to 223 deaths per 100,000 live births, an average annual rate of reduction of 2.1 percent, according to UN inter-agency estimates.
This is about one third of the 6.4 percent annual rate needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of 70 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births by 2030.
The maternal mortality ratio in the African Region in 2020 was estimated at 531 deaths per 100,000 live births. Countries with extremely high maternal mortality rates are South Sudan with 1223 deaths, followed by Chad with 1063 deaths and Nigeria with 1047 deaths per 100,000 live births.
In this respect, enhancing prenatal care is instrumental in improving women's experiences, and reducing maternal and perinatal mortality. Adequate antenatal care can prevent 26 percent, and increased access to quality obstetric care can prevent 48 percent. This demonstrates that improving prenatal coverage and high-quality prenatal service delivery are unquestionably required to meet SGDs after 10 years.
Even though the percentage of women attending prenatal care has increased nationwide making maternal and neonatal mortality is remaining high; so working in a more organized fashion to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 3, of universal health coverage and reducing the maternal mortality rate (MMR) to less than 70 per 100,000 live births by 2030, the quality of the services needs to be addressed.
Lately, the Ministry of Health has organized a platform that discusses ways to enhance prenatal care to reduce the morbidity and mortality of mothers and newborn babies.
The Ministry of Health has been celebrating Healthy Motherhood Month for the 18th time at national level and the 37th at the global level with the theme, "We will ensure equitable and quality antenatal care on time to save motherhood."
Maternal Health Desk Head with the Ministry of Health, Zemzem Mohamed, said that prenatal care should get priority in order to reduce the morbidity and mortality rates of mothers and their children.
Maternal and infant mortality rates are 26 percent lower compared to those without gynecological care. According to the recommendations of the World Health Organization, all pregnant mothers should have at least eight antenatal visits; she said, referring to studies conducted in the area.
Following this, Ethiopia has been implementing the Focused Antenatal Care (FANC) model, a newer and better approach to antenatal care and pregnant women, which has been implemented for the past years, based on the recommendations of the World Health Organization, she said.
She said, "According to the WHO's recommendation, all pregnant women should start antenatal care sessions before the gestational age of 12 weeks of pregnancy. Early pregnancy monitoring helps prevent and control problems that occur during pregnancy. However, the 2019 National Minor Demographic and Questionnaire Survey indicated that the average time for mothers to start antenatal care is 4 months. Therefore, the media and stakeholders should work on raising the awareness of the public on this issue."
Senior Advisor to Health State Minister, Sileshi Garoma, said that among the works being done to improve the health of mothers are the expansion of health facilities that provide emergency childbirth and infant health services, the purchase and distribution of ambulances, the strengthening of mentorships around the region, providing support to regional budgets, offering professional support, capacity building, backing districts through data analysis, and many other works.
In an exclusive interview with Ayer Tena Health Science and Business College Instructor Mulatu Gebremariam, he said that the government's effort to address the challenge associated with maternal health is commendable. The effort in availing reproductive health services to the rural and metropolitan areas should be strengthened further.
According to him, there is a problem of the influx of migrants of fellow citizens who are under active reproductive age to urban areas. This influx is creating an impact on health service delivery; one of the impacts falls on the quality of providing prenatal care services. Moreover, communities in the remote areas of the country and also in metropolitan areas are the beneficiaries of the services, which are not at the desired level for various reasons, including a lack of health facilities.
To access the services, the Minis with pertinent stakeholders should sort the communities through community outreach programs and develop a strategy that could help to ensure the nation provides quality prenatal care services.
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"In my view, all parents and their newborn babies should get improved birth services. I recommend the government and development partners to provide services through mobile reproductive healthcare clinics directly to communities who are living in the hinterlands and needing the services."
The government and pertinent stakeholders should step up efforts in training skilled human power, which could help in providing quality prenatal services.
As the use of health facilities is significantly related to prenatal care contacts, and adequate prenatal care entails both the use of services and the sufficiency of the content within the service, the federal and regional states should focus on availing health facilities at the proximity of communities.
"I am optimistic that if concerted efforts are exerted to increase access to the services, Ethiopia will make significant strides in meeting prenatal care standards through providing quality services to all citizens," he opined.
