Maternal health finally getting some attention
Posted by Vulie Kunene on 16 May 2007 at 06:42 am | Tagged as: Community Support, General, Maternal Protection, Tanzania
JIANG ALIPO
Daily News; Tuesday,May 08, 2007 @00:03
ONLY relatives, friends and neighbours, those mourning, who usually notice the gap left behind after someone close dies. Also, very little attention is given to a common cause of women death called “the silent killer”. This is when a woman dies due to child birth related causes. Staff Writer JIANG ALIPO writes on.
RETIRED President Benjamin Mkapa declared three days of national mourning when mv Bukoba sank on May 21, 1996, killing more than 800 people. Flags were flown half-mast to mark one of the worst accidents in our nation.
What if more than ten mv Bukoba sank every year, unnoticeable, without a single day of mourning or a half-mast flag anywhere. That is 9,000; ten times more than the number of people aboad mv Bukoba, is the number of mothers dying due to childbirth-related causes in our country every year. Yet very few people notice.
The mv Bukoba example is the way Ambassador Dr Gertrude Mongella used to drive the point into the heads of participants attending the Global Partnership Forum for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health in Dar es Salaam recently.
“I am speaking here, as a woman, who has survived through two miscarriages and four caesarean sections. How many others daily do not have the opportunities I had had and instead end up dying?” she asked.
This is a country where 25 mothers die everyday due to childbirth-related causes and pregnancy. Thirty more are severely handicapped affecting their ability to take care of children. “Pregnancy is not an illness, it is an everyday miracle. In the 21st century women should not have to lose their lives in the process of giving birth,” painfully explained Dr Mongella in her speech.
The White Ribbon Alliance Tanzania Representative, Ms Rose Mlay, attributes excessive bleeding, infection, unsafe abortion, hypertensive disorders and obstructed labour, amongst the conditions that can be easily prevented or controlled, being the major direct causes of maternal deaths.
But mothers die due to the above causes and others simply because more than half of Tanzanian women give birth at home, without support from trained and skilled medical personals who might have foreseen the problem and prevented their effects.
“Medical personnel are not present during child delivery for half of the mothers in our country because of the lack of access to medical facilities, mostly caused by lack of transport facilities,” Ms Mlay says. She adds that some of the times medical personals may be around but they are not having the training or skills. There could also be inadequate equipment or medical facilities, as is often the case in rural areas.
Despite negatively affecting or killing mothers, the above facts also affect children, whereby over 80 per cent of child deaths in the country are caused by delivery complications in rural districts, which occur at home. Half of those die without having ever attended any health centre. A total of 157,100 children under the age of five die every year, which is equal to 112 deaths per 1,000 live births, whereas a total of 42,500 stillbirths occur annual.
However, the above numbers are the result of a dramatic decrease of infant and child mortality since 1999, from 99 to 68 in 2005 for infants and from 147 to the current 112 for children. The recent rapid gain in child survival is the main reason for bringing this meeting this country as Unicef Representative Dr Kerida McDonald explains: “Tanzania was selected as the premier because it has made very important achievements in reducing child mortality rate.”
The improvement is attributed to exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months, which has increased compared to five years ago and the fact that many more children receive Vitamin A supplements.
Maternal, newborn and child health stakeholders agree that this number of death can be reduced but they say that both the human and financial resources allocated to the health sector must be increased for this to be practically possible. “The world has the technology but we are missing the political will and resources that can support maternal, newborn and child health,” explained the partnership senior advisor, Ms Lori McDougall.
With relations to this the Prime Minister, Mr Edward Lowassa, has called on African governments to increase health spending up to 15 per cent of overall national budgets to reduce the such deaths. “The necessary step for Africa is to translate our political commitment into financial commitments. This can be done by increasing our budgets for health care to at least 15 per cent overall national budgets,” said the premier.
In general, the partnership joins together the maternal, newborn and child health communities, enabling unified and effective approaches that promise greater progress in reducing mortality.
The Tanzanian Partnership has an aim of facilitating the necessary attention, co-ordinating, financing, provide technical guidance, policy framework, research and monitoring in order to reduce the level of maternal, newborn and child mortality in the country.
RETIRED President Benjamin Mkapa declared three days of national mourning when mv Bukoba sank on May 21, 1996, killing more than 800 people. Flags were flown half-mast to mark one of the worst accidents in our nation. What if more than ten mv Bukoba sank every year, unnoticeable, without a single day of mourning or a half-mast flag anywhere. That is 9,000; ten times more than the number of people aboad mv Bukoba, is the number of mothers dying due to childbirth-related causes in our country every year. Yet very few people notice. The mv Bukoba example is the way Ambassador Dr Gertrude Mongella used to drive the point into the heads of participants attending the Global Partnership Forum for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health in Dar es Salaam recently. “I am speaking here, as a woman, who has survived through two miscarriages and four caesarean sections. How many others daily do not have the opportunities I had had and instead end up dying?” she asked. This is a country where 25 mothers die everyday due to childbirth-related causes and pregnancy. Thirty more are severely handicapped affecting their ability to take care of children. “Pregnancy is not an illness, it is an everyday miracle. In the 21st century women should not have to lose their lives in the process of giving birth,” painfully explained Dr Mongella in her speech. The White Ribbon Alliance Tanzania Representative, Ms Rose Mlay, attributes excessive bleeding, infection, unsafe abortion, hypertensive disorders and obstructed labour, amongst the conditions that can be easily prevented or controlled, being the major direct causes of maternal deaths. But mothers die due to the above causes and others simply because more than half of Tanzanian women give birth at home, without support from trained and skilled medical personals who might have foreseen the problem and prevented their effects. “Medical personnel are not present during child delivery for half of the mothers in our country because of the lack of access to medical facilities, mostly caused by lack of transport facilities,” Ms Mlay says. She adds that some of the times medical personals may be around but they are not having the training or skills. There could also be inadequate equipment or medical facilities, as is often the case in rural areas. Despite negatively affecting or killing mothers, the above facts also affect children, whereby over 80 per cent of child deaths in the country are caused by delivery complications in rural districts, which occur at home. Half of those die without having ever attended any health centre. A total of 157,100 children under the age of five die every year, which is equal to 112 deaths per 1,000 live births, whereas a total of 42,500 stillbirths occur annual. However, the above numbers are the result of a dramatic decrease of infant and child mortality since 1999, from 99 to 68 in 2005 for infants and from 147 to the current 112 for children. The recent rapid gain in child survival is the main reason for bringing this meeting this country as Unicef Representative Dr Kerida McDonald explains: “Tanzania was selected as the premier because it has made very important achievements in reducing child mortality rate.” The improvement is attributed to exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months, which has increased compared to five years ago and the fact that many more children receive Vitamin A supplements. Maternal, newborn and child health stakeholders agree that this number of death can be reduced but they say that both the human and financial resources allocated to the health sector must be increased for this to be practically possible. “The world has the technology but we are missing the political will and resources that can support maternal, newborn and child health,” explained the partnership senior advisor, Ms Lori McDougall. With relations to this the Prime Minister, Mr Edward Lowassa, has called on African governments to increase health spending up to 15 per cent of overall national budgets to reduce the such deaths. “The necessary step for Africa is to translate our political commitment into financial commitments. This can be done by increasing our budgets for health care to at least 15 per cent overall national budgets,” said the premier. In general, the partnership joins together the maternal, newborn and child health communities, enabling unified and effective approaches that promise greater progress in reducing mortality. The Tanzanian Partnership has an aim of facilitating the necessary attention, co-ordinating, financing, provide technical guidance, policy framework, research and monitoring in order to reduce the level of maternal, newborn and child mortality in the country.
