The Sunyani West Municipality has recorded no case of maternal mortality for the past five years, Mr Daniel Konka, the Municipal Director of Health Services, said on Wednesday.
In an interview with the Ghana New Agency at Odumase, the municipal capital, he said the Directorate’s success story was through some important procedures introduced to save mothers and babies during delivery.
He assured of the Directorate’s commitment to working hard to sustain the gains made, based on some workable strategies designed by the Management to continue to save mothers, particularly those in the rural areas.
Though the Directorate was performing well in controlling and preventing other major diseases such as yellow fever through frequent immunization, maternal mortality prevention had been the priority, Dr Konka said.
He mentioned the Modified Early Obstetrics Warning Scores as one of the working strategies to sustain this feat, in addition to the availability of midwives at facilities in the rural communities to provide quality antenatal, maternal and child health services.
Frequent visits to homes and motivation of staff at the rural level had been improved through capacity building with the limited internal resources to empower the staff to identify dangerous signs during antenatal care and refer patients promptly.
He said the home visits had helped immensely to curtail stigmatisation or delays in seeking care due to distance to provide the basic antenatal services.
Good communication skills among staff, client and the referral facilities had been excellent to ensure efficient service delivery to save lives and build a good reputation.
Though accessing quality health care services was challenging, with determination and hard work, success would be achieved since most of the maternal deaths were caused by preventable and untreated complications, Mr Konka.
