The Director of the Central Regional Health Directorate, Dr. Akosua Agyeiwaa Owusu- Sarpong says a three-year initiative to address the reoccurring challenges with maternal and child health mortalities in the region has proven to be effective.
She was elated to reveal that the initiative has had a significant impact on the directorate’s quest to reduce maternal mortality.
According to her, the initial ratio of 109. 2 per 100,000 live deaths has been reduced to 104.4 per 100,000 live deaths.
Dr. Owusu- Sarpong, in an address at the 3-day Central Regional annual Health sector performance meeting also indicated that still deaths had a significant decrease from 13. 3% to 12.7 % with teenage pregnancy also reducing from 11.8% to 11. 6%.
“Through the initiative, we have successfully implemented some key activities which include continuous surveillance of maternal deaths through the adoption of maternal death tracker, building the capacity of our staff and safe motherhood and lifesaving skills, supervision of maternal health service by our specialists in all the various areas and community engagement of maternal and child health,” she explained
The Regional Director also stated that the region has improved in areas of childhood immunization, family planning services and HIV services among others.
These strides, she said, are through the collective engagement with key stakeholders.
She, therefore, noted that through the support of the Ghana Health service and development partners, the regional health service successfully conducted another round of integrated supportive supervision to all the district, hospital, and some health centers during the past year.
However, Dr. Owusu- Sarpong hinted that even with successes chalked efforts must be made to bring the maternal mortalities, stillbirths, and teenage pregnancy to a reduced rate.
“…But we need to do more. We will therefore continue to work with stakeholders such as our queen mothers, communities, and others to reduce teenage pregnancy further,” she emphasized.
Read also: Central Region is a High Performing Region- Regional Director for health
Source: Emmanuella Ama Gyamfi/ATLFMNEWS
