Many women die of pregnancy related complications

Nine hundred and fifty-four women died as a result of pregnancy complications in the country's health institutions last year, Ministry of Health said on Thursday. Dr Patrick Kuma Aboagye, Co-ordinator of the Reproductive Health Unit, who was contributing at a symposium on; "Delays in seeking or receiving lifesaving care by pregnant women," said 851 women died of pregnancy complications in 2000.

He said a lot more women died either on their way to the hospital, at home or in shrines and churches that were not recorded. The causes of deaths were ignorance, poor health services, false beliefs and poverty. The symposium was organised by the White Ribbon Alliance, (WRA-Ghana) for Safe Motherhood, an international coalition of organisations formed to promote and increase public awareness of the need to make pregnancy and childbirth safe for all women.

Its objective is to bring to the minimum, deaths resulting from pregnancy related complications out of which one woman dies each minute with nearly 600,000 dying each year worldwide. Dr Aboagye said safe motherhood was the process of achieving conception, going through pregnancy and childbirth safely and giving birth to a healthy baby.

He said though all these deaths could be prevented, there were policies that impinged on ensuring that pregnant women received the care needed for safe delivery that went beyond health policies. "These include educational policies, laws, economic, empowerment of women and policies on roads and highways."

Dr Aboagye said if health education were intensified, proper antenatal care were given with a supervised delivery among other things, the number of deaths could be reduced. Dr Sylvia Deganus, Specialist Obstetrician of the Tema General Hospital, said the top five causes of maternal deaths in Ghana were; severe bleeding with shock - 25 per cent; infections 15 per cent; complications of abortion 13 per cent; hypertension 12 per cent; obstructed labour eight per cent with others accounting for the rest.

She said time was very important in ensuring safe motherhood adding that the deaths were due to delays in recognising life-threatening conditions, delays in making a decision to seek medical care, reaching a health unit and in receiving help. Administrative bottlenecks like poor staff attitudes, poor facilities, cash and carry, poor transportation, bad roads and inappropriate referral accounted for most of these deaths.

Dr Deganus advised pregnant women to seek early care especially when they saw signs of bleeding, fever, swelling in the face and hands, severe headache and abdominal pains and offensive vaginal discharge, as they could be dangerous.