Cape Coast, Aug. 25, GNA - The Central Regional Health Directorate will now focus on discipline, supportive supervision and high impact service delivery in line with its commitment to improve health care delivery especially in the reduction of maternal and child morbidity. The Acting Regional Director of Health Services, Dr Samuel Kwashie, said the Ghana Health Service (GHS) required a well disciplined and motivated workforce to achieve its objectives. He was speaking on Monday at the "mid-year performance review meeting" of the Regional Health Directorate to assess its performance and evolve strategies to improve it.

Dr Kwashie stressed the need to ensure a high level of discipline, professional standards and ethical compliance. He said the directorate had achieved successes in health care delivery such as the eradication of guinea worm while efforts to eradicate others like polio and measles were on course. Dr Kwashie said there was a marginal reduction in maternal mortality cases with 40 recorded during the first half of the year as against 42 during the same period last year.

"The directorate still considers every single preventable maternal death as tragic and unacceptable." On the staff strength of the directorate, Dr Kwashie said 49 and 77 staff and community health nurses respectively and five newly trained midwives had been posted to the region while only four out of eight medical officers have turned up.

Mr. Samuel Sosi, acting head of the Regional Public Health Unit, expressed concern about the high rate of anaemia among pregnant women and children and said the two groups made up the majority of the 10,840 cases reported during the first half of the year. Mr. Sosi, who is also the Regional Nutrition Officer, said she was worried about the severe cases of malnourished children and to help reverse the situation four more nutritionists have been trained in addition to the two already at post. He said malaria cases among expectant mothers and children under five had gone down, with 236 pregnant women reporting with severe malaria as against 836 last year.

On maternal mortality he said 40 women died through child birth in the first half of the year, 50% of them being women over 35 years as against 42 in the first half of 2008. On HIV/AIDS, he said 252 pregnant women tested positive as against 237 in 2008 during the period under review. On disease surveillance he said 13 cases of measles and 19 of meningitis were recorded while 30 leprosy cases have been reported in Mfantsiman, Awutu-Senya and Upper Denkyira East districts. The Deputy Regional Director of Health Services, Nana Kwame Boampong, identified lack of transparency and poor communication between management and staff as some of the problems facing the service and called for smooth flow of information to foster transparency.