Maternal deaths drop in the Offinso Municipality

Maternal deaths in the Offinso Municipality saw a significant drop last year, Ms Beatrice Appah, the Municipal Health Director, has announced.

From the year 2011’s high of 14 cases, it came down to six as of the end of year 2012.

She gave some of the causes of those deaths as ruptured uterus, anemia, eclampsia complications, and excessive bleeding.

She said their goal was to achieve zero deaths of mothers during childbirth and that they would work hard to realize.

Acting jointly with the Better Ghana Management Services and the Centre for the Development of People (CEDEP), both NGOs, they have been carrying out intensive health education to aid pregnant mothers to regularly attend antenatal clinic and early referral of complicated deliveries to the hospitals.

Ms Appah was speaking at the 12th annual performance review conference held by the Municipal Health Directorate at Offinso.

She told the meeting that family planning acceptance went up from 3,954 to 4,910, representing an 18 per cent increase.

Malaria continued to top the commonly seen diseases at the Out-Patients Department of the facilities – a total of 44,864 cases were recorded.

She said to help bring this down they had distributed 52,000 treated nets to 26,995 households.

Ms Appah expressed worry about the increasing cases of tuberculosis (TB) in the area, which rose from 75 to 99 cases during the period.

She complained about the lack of both transport and accommodation for the health workers as well as inadequate funding, and pleaded with the municipal assembly and Government to help tackle these.

Mr Adam Mohammed Baba, the Municipal Coordinating Director, praised the health professionals for hard work and dedication and assured them that the assembly would give them the needed support.