Woman Operates Maternity Home From Kiosk

In one of the remotest communities in the Ga South Municipality, there is a woman, whose activities may raise questions to any first timer who visits her improvised maternity kiosk, but people in the community, including the overlord, Dzasetse Nii Osabu II, are full of praise for this woman for her immeasurable services to the community.

Comfort Gadasu, however, explained that though she had never gone through training in midwifery or as a traditional birth attendant, she settled at Gbawe Gonsee four years ago to start providing antenatal and post natal care to pregnant women and nursing mothers in the communities.

Madam Gadasu said she had inspiration from God after a vision she had sometime ago to help members of the community, who were ‘cervical incompetent’. Madam Gadasu said she was able to identify some herbs which she prepared into a drink which she administered to women who had challenges in getting pregnant.

Most of these clients, according to her got pregnant after a month of being on the herbal preparation. She realised that since she was eager to ensure that these women never suffered any miscarriage she insisted they regularly come to her house for attention and care.

“After a while, I started delivering them of their babies. In no time, news of my activities spread through the community and beyond and the numbers kept multiplying” she explained.

In order to provide adequate care to her clients, she mounted a small kiosk measuring 12X12” to accommodate the pregnant women when time was due.Madam Gadasu said initially when she started operation, she did not keep any record of the deliveries but the records she kept since 2008 indicated over 17 deliveries.

She had assisted a large number of them to take seed. She said women from Ablekuma, Fan Milk, Dome, Taifa, Achimota, Manhyia and its environs frequent her home for assistance. She said she has not recorded any still birth or death at her home. All deliveries had been smooth. The few that had difficulties were detained for between two to five days at the home before they were discharged.

The Mirror newspaper spoke to some of the women who had benefited from the services of Madam Gadasu. They were Salamatu Musah, 45, Belinda Kyei and Emelia Kyerewaa, and they all attested to the potency of her herbal preparation and excellent services.

They explained that they preferred to visit the maternity home because of its proximity since the roads in the community with a population of about 1,900 were bad and they could not be sure of getting to the nearest hospital safely if their time were due, especially in the night.

Asafoaste Nettey of Gonsee commended Madam Gadasu and implored the government to lend support to her by putting up a clinic and maternity home to take care of the health needs of the people.

He said the chiefs had already allocated a vast tract of land for that purpose.

Checks conducted by the Mirror at the Ghana Health Service (GHS) headquarters in Accra revealed that the GHS frowned on such practices.

A source at the GHS said the woman must be discouraged and impressed upon to abandon her operations and direct those who came to her to report at government hospitals or accredited private hospitals and maternity homes for attention.

According to the source, the GHS does not have the mandate to arrest traditional birth attendants or anybody operating a maternity home once nothing had happened but it cannot just look on until a mishap occurs. The source expressed gratitude to the Mirror for bringing the activities of Madam Gadasu to its attention and promised that the GHS would detail its Greater Accra branch to monitor her activities.