The Indigenous Women Empowerment Network Ghana (IWEN), a non-government organisation (NGO), is implementing a six-month project to improve maternal and newborn health in the Ada West District of the Greater Accra Region. Being funded by the KGL Foundation, the project seeks to enhance sexual, maternal and newborn health for 2500 women of reproductive age by making maternal and newborn health services accessible to them through community mobilisation and vigorous advocacy. It would further mobilise, empower and prepare indigenous women to manage pregnancy and childbirth in the local communities. Ms Celestina Andoh, the Executive Director of IWEN who disclosed this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Sunyani regretted about 830 women died in the country every year due to pregnancy and childbirth-related complications. The project’s implementation would therefore improve in-patient referrals to appropriate health facilities, and further increase the availability of essential medicines and supplies in the local communities. She said at least 22,800 women and girls also died through unsafe abortion, with adolescent girls below 25 years accounting for almost half of all the deaths, and added postpartum haemorrhage remained the leading cause of maternal deaths. Nonetheless, Ms Andoh said the country had made considerable progress in reducing maternal and newborn mortalities, saying the national 2017 Maternal and Health Survey pegged the nation’s maternal mortality rate at 310 per 100,000 live births, while neonatal mortality rate stood at 25 per 1,000 live births. The country has also achieved an institutional maternal mortality ratio of 102 per 100,000 live births, while the institutional neonatal mortality rate dropped to seven per 1,000 live births. Ms Andoh said the nation still faced several challenges including prematurity, birth asphyxia and infection and therefore underlined the need to facilitate strong partnerships between the Ministry of Health and civil society organisations working in the health sector to enhance health delivery outcomes. Mr Edward Ayabilah, The Project’s Officer for Ada West District, said challenges of inadequate health infrastructure, limited access to essential services as well as deep-rooted socio-cultural barriers needed to be tackled to enhance maternal health and childbirth. He said the successful implementation of the project would put the nation on the edge of achieving goal three of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 and called on everybody to support it.
Source: Ghana News Agency
