The Central Regional Director of Health Service, Dr. Mrs. Akosua Agyeiwaa Owusu-Sarpong has touted the achievement of the region as it was adjudged the safest region in Ghana for mothers to deliver their babies at the last national neonatal care assessment.
She made this known during the opening of the 2022 Central Regional Health Sector Annual Performance Review Meeting.
The Annual Regional Health Sector Performance Review is a platform to review the performance of the health sector in the region, analyze the performance gaps and map out strategies to achieve its subsequent performance targets.
Per the review, the central region was adjourned as the safest region for mothers to deliver their babies in Ghana.
The maternal mortality ratio, in the region, declined from 104 per 100,000 live births in 2021 to 90.9 per 100,000 LBS in 2022. Similarly, neonatal deaths also improved from 6.9 per 1000 live births in 2021 to 4.8 per 1000 live births in 2022. There were similar gains in the stillbirth rate, from 12.7/1000 LBS to 11.2/1000 LBS between 2021 and 2022, and in the number of supervised deliveries.
According to Dr. Mrs. Owusu-Sarpong, the region’s victory as the best region in childbirth is a result of the numerous healthcare measures instituted since the year 2022 to stem the tide in maternal and perinatal deaths, and improve maternal and child health in all the health facilities across the region.
She said “we have made progress in some of our service indicators and also built a strong and robust public health and surveillance system over the years to detect and handle epidemics and other outcomes…An example is in maternal and perinatal health services. A lot of time, effort, and resources have gone into our maternal health initiatives which are now beginning to yield results…Quality of care and quality improvement initiatives have already been institutionalized in our facilities. We will continue to monitor the functionality of these systems using integrated supportive supervision and peer review monitoring teams.”
She added that more measures will be put in place to consolidate these gains and to improve healthcare delivery in the Central Region.
In an address, the Vice Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast, Professor Johnson Nyarko Boampong said the theme for the review, Sustaining the gains in the service performance through improved governance and quality of care towards achieving the universal health coverage: the role of stakeholders is apt as it will help the directorate to reflects on the gains made in the past years.
To him, the theme will provoke discussions for improved healthcare delivery in the region and beyond.
“In the course of these deliberations, we anticipate that this platform will provoke discussions on the development of sustainable strategies for continuous improvement in service performance, using facility governance and improved quality of care indicators as a prime area of focus. This is considered to be very important and critical to the Nation as the nation moves towards the attainment of the sustainable development goals and the universal Health coverage2030” he continued.
On her part, the Central Regional Minister, Mrs. Justina Marigold Assan indicated that despite the achievements there are several challenges confronting the regional health directorate including inadequate human resources, and limited funding partnerships.
She, therefore, called for the support of stakeholders to support the promotion of health delivery in the region with their expertise.
she emphasized saying the health of a nation is the wealth of that nation and Issues relating to health are paramount to the very survival of the people as such, stakeholders must rise to the core to ensure that they play their roles in bringing improvements in the delivery of health care services to sustain the county’s gain towards achieving the universal health coverage.
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Source: Eric Sekyi/ATLFMNEWS
