Birth attendant appeals for support to complete maternity unit

Madam Zinabu Yakubu, a Traditional Birth Attendant (TBA) at Tanina in the Wa West District, has appealed to benevolent individuals and organisations to support the community to complete a maternity unit under construction.

She said the unit, when completed, would help alleviate the challenges women went through to access skilled delivery services at Poyentanga or Wa in the Upper West Region.

“We don’t have a delivery room here so women go to Poyentanga or Wa. We are suffering but what can we do,” Madam Yakubu said in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA).

She said she had served the women in the community for several years, as a TBA, until the Government made it mandatory for every pregnant woman to deliver at a health facility.

“Our CHPS compound doesn’t have a place for delivery. If we are able to build this one here I will support the women to deliver because sometimes I follow them either to Wa or Poyentanga to ensure they deliver safely,” she said.
“It will help us a lot but I cannot do anything. I will only plead that some kind people should help us.”

Meanwhile, Mr Seidu Kassim, the Assembly Member of the Tanina Electoral Area, told the GNA that they had been able to raise some money to start the project but required GH?39,689.00 to complete.

He said the amount covered the cost of roofing, plumbing, tiling and other finishing works.

The decision to construct the facility stemmed from the need to help reduce the drudgery pregnant women went through to access skilled delivery services, he said, and that the required amount was huge and the community alone could not raise it.

Mr Kassim said the chief of the community led the initiative about three years ago following a promise by the Wa West District Health Directorate to provide the CHPS facility with a midwife if the maternity unit was constructed.

“I am appealing to kind hearted people and NGOs to help us to build this maternity ward so that Tanina women will not have to travel to other places to deliver,” he said.

The facility, he said, also lacked water, which affected its smooth operation as the health staff had to source water from a borehole at the community.

In recent days, pregnant women are required to deliver at health institutions as part of measures to reduce maternal mortality as well as meet the UN Sustainable Development Goal on Health.

In some jurisdictions, women who delivered at home were fined at the health facilities.

Meanwhile, access to delivery services at some of those health facilities, particularly at the rural level, is a privilege owing to the long distance pregnant women had to trek on deplorable roads before accessing care.