According to the authorities at the Sunyani Regional Hospital, almost all the midwives at the medical facility are 50 years, thus affecting efforts at eliminating maternal mortality in the region.

Mr. Asare Bediako, the hospital’s administrator, made this known at the 2012 first quarter review performance meeting of Sunyani Municipal Health Insurance Scheme at Abesim, near Sunyani.

He explained that because many of the midwives were in their old age, they found it difficult to attend to pregnant women in labour.

For these among other peculiar reasons, the hospital recorded 20 cases of maternal deaths in 2011.

The review meeting was on the theme: “The stakeholders inputs-key to sustainable healthcare financing.”

Mr. Bediako expressed worry that for some years now, no midwife had been posted to the regional hospital, which served as a referral point to various health centres and clinics in the region.

“If more energetic midwives are not urgently posted to the hospital, there is the possibility that cases of maternal deaths can increase by the end of 2012,” he said.

The hospital administrator observed that, because of the introduction of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), hospital attendance had increased tremendously, indicating that the scheme currently covers 82 per cent of the hospital’s clients.

This situation, Mr. Bediako said, has brought heavy work load on health workers.

He admitted that although deaths had slowed down and life expectancy rate shot up, the introduction of the NHIS at the facility in 2005 was still confronted with problems such as lack of promptness in the payment of claims.

Mr. Alfred Agamah, Municipal Manager of the scheme expressed concern that some service providers administered expired drugs to clients.

He reminded the scheme’s 41 service providers in the municipality that the policy on free maternal delivery, introduced in 2007 is on-going and advised them to comply.

Mr. Agamah said the scheme currently has a total membership of 102,520 and had since January this year paid GH?1,533,619 as claims to service providers.

He entreated the service providers to prepare and submit their claims in time for prompt payment.

Mr. Agamah explained that, the scheme operates under 88 catchment communities in the municipality, and advised those who had still not registered to do so, to enable them to access prompt and quality health care delivery.**