World Health Report launched

Accra, June 8, GNA - This year's World Health Report has projected that 334,000 additional midwives would be needed in the next 10 years to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, which talks about infant and maternal mortality.
The Report, which was launched nationally in Accra on Wednesday by Hajia Alima Mahama, Minister of Women and Children's Affairs said there were 140,000 health professionals currently providing first-level maternal care and 27,000 doctors currently not having the competencies to provide back-up care.
"Without planning and capacity building, at the national level and within health districts, it will not be possible to correct the shortages and improve the skills mix and the working environment", the Report stated.
Dr Sylvia Deganus, Obstetrician and Gynaecologist at the Tema General Hospital who gave an overview of the report at the launch said after years of neglect there were problems that required immediate attention: "first and foremost is the nagging question of the remuneration to the workforce".
The Report titled: "Make Every Mother and Child Count", noted that salary levels in many countries were rightfully unfair and insufficient to provide for the daily living costs, let alone to live up to the expectations of health professionals.
It described the situation as one of the root causes of de-motivation, lack of productivity and various forms of brain drain and migration of health professionals from the developing countries including Ghana to developed countries that were well endowed thereby hampering the correct functioning of services.
The Report, touched on mothers and children, obstacles to progress: context or policy, great expectations: making pregnancy safer, attending to 136 million births every year, redressing child care: survival, growth and development and reconciling maternal, new born and child health with health system development.
It urged governments to use health district models as a rational way to organise and decentralise health care, "but long term commitment and investment are required to obtained sustained results", it added. The Report noted that there were huge unmet need for investment in contraception, information and education to prevent unwanted pregnancies though no family planning policy would prevent it all and called for the need to avoid the 68,000 deaths as well as disabilities and suffering that go with unsafe abortions.
Hajia Mahama said it was unfortunate that many women were dying of pregnancy related diseases, which could be avoided adding that the immediate families had a responsibility of saving lives during pregnancy and child birth by providing emotional, physical and financial support and show keen interest in learning about the danger signs during pregnancy.
She said poverty was the fundamental issue in the realisation of the advancement of the health of women and children and the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy had identified exclusion and vulnerability as one of the key thematic areas to be tackled.
Hajia Mahama said efforts were being made to put up educational and learning facilities to enable children access education, training, improvement and expansion of health services to ensure the survival, development and empowerment of children and the community.
Dr Henrietta Odoi Agyarko, Deputy Director of Public Health of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) said the translation of the MDGs into reality was far from completion and progress towards them was not reassuring. She said unless governments around the world succeeded in bringing about the major changes in the very near future, the target for reducing maternal and child mortality would not be achieved by 2015.
Dr Odoi Agyarko appealed to government to put more resources into health development especially in the reproductive, maternal and new child health.
Mr Samuel Owusu-Adjei, Deputy Minster of Health, said policy makers needed to be confronted with the issues concerning women and children and scale up interventions to reduce maternal and infant mortality. Dr Melville George, World Health Organisation Representative, said the report was to provide countries, donor agencies, development partners, heads of agencies, the media and the international organisations the needed information to help make policy and funding decisions.
He said the report served as a reminder that there was only a decade left to achieve the internationally agreed development aspirations for the world's population and called on all to ensure that the needed interventions were put in place to ensure that the MDGs were met.
Professor Agyeman Badu-Akosa, Director-General of the GHS said the figure of women dying out of pregnancy and childbirth were frightening and called for all hands to be on deck to save the lives of mothers and children.
He said 65 per cent of the 95 per cent women patronising antenatal care were anaemic and called on them to ensure that they eat local foods such as green and highly nutritious leaves, adopt family planning, ensure child nutrition and immunisation to save the lives of mothers and children.