The Upper East Regional Health Directorate, in a bid to reduce maternal deaths, successfully increased its supervised deliveries from 13,483 in 2011 to 14,383 in the first half of this year.

This represents an increase from 32.5 per cent to 34.13 per cent and the highest coverage was recorded in Bawku West with 42.98 per cent while Kassena Nankana West had the lowest coverage of 24.6 per cent.

Dr. Koku Awoonor-Williams, Regional Director of Health Services, made this known in Bolgatanga during the regional mid-year review meeting of Ghana Health Service personnel.

With the review on the theme: ‘Accelerating the gains towards achieving the MDGs’, Dr. Awoonor-Williams said supervised deliveries coverage in the region was one of the best in the country with improvement witnessed in 2012, while maternal deaths reduced from 23 in the first half of 2011 to 17 during the same period in 2012.

He said the Bawku Municipal Health Directorate recorded a reduction in maternal death cases from eight in the first six months of 2011 to five in the same period of 2012.

The reduction in cases of deaths, Dr. Awoonor-Williams said, was attributed to the increased facilities, conducting deliveries and best practice approach adopted by districts that included the Zorkor Initiative, where the women are given a hot bath and zomkom, a local drink made from millet flour.

The Director assured the people that the health service would continue to chalk better maternal and new born outcomes in ensuing years saying the trend was seeing a downward maternal mortality ratio of 127/100,000 live births as against 164/100,000 Live births witnessed in 2011.

He said Anti- Natal coverage for 2012 had been impressive though there was slight reduction from 48.3 per cent in 2011 to 46.8 per cent in 2012.

The Bawku West District had the highest of 58.3 per cent while Kassena Nankana West covered 36.9 per cent, being the least.