Providing Timely And Accessible Quality Health Care In Rural Ghana

Reports of pregnant women living in rural parts of the country going through very difficult times and processes on their way to deliver has been one that cannot be wished away, judging from the numbers.

Some of them go through hard times when in labour and are only able to walk home together with their new born babies. Others in spite of all what they go through end up losing their babies. Unfortunately, others lose their lives in their attempt to help increase the population of Ghana.

A story published in today's edition of The Chronicle quoted the World Health Organization (WHO) as saying that providing timely and accessible quality health care could prevent almost three quarters of infant deaths each year and reduce maternal deaths substantially.

According to the World Bank, infant mortality rate in Ghana was last measured at 42.80 per 1,000 live births in 2015.

New estimates in levels and trends in Child Mortality Report 2015, released by the UN Inter-Agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UN IGME) indicates that, although the global progress has been substantial 16,000 children under five still die every day.

Under the headline; “DYING AT BIRTH”, the report chronicles the sad story of Dodofie women losing babies despite efforts to reduce infant mortality.

It gives account of the traumatic experience of Abena Yom, a native of Dodofie, who lost her baby at birth, after a strenuous fight to save the baby and herself.

The story says at Dodofie, a remote village in the Kadjebi District of the Volta Region, lack of health education, poor road networks and unavailability of a fully-functional health facility, contrive to cause many pregnant women to lose their lives and their babies.

Abena's husband ran away from her when she was a month-old pregnant, allowing the hazardous condition in the rural area to inflict a heavy blow on her. She was left single and with two children to fend for.

According to Abena, she had to be carried through the dark, bumpy road to the Dodo Amanfrom health center, a journey which lasted about an hour – due to the bad nature of road links and the absence of streetlights.

Abena recounted how she was referred from Dodo Amanfrom to the main hospital at Dodi-Papase that dawn. “When we got to Amanfrom, the health officials told us it was complicated. They, therefore, referred us to Papase that dawn,” she recalled'

That journey too was via a motorbike since it is the most widely used means of transport in the area. An emotional Abena remembered how exhausted and weak she was when she got to the hospital after another three-and-half hour journey that dawn. \

It is the wish of The Chronicle that no woman should go through such ordeal, as experienced by Abena. We are asking the government to intensify its efforts at improve road networks in rural parts of the country to help reduce the rate at which our women are dying through childbirth.

The Chronicle urges government to alternatively establish more Community- based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) in remote areas to allow the people have access to health care.

The paper, however, disagrees with the Kadjebi DCE, Jacob Asokonde, who explained in his reaction to the story that, because there is already a CHPS Compound located in the district, “…it is impracticable to site another CHPS facility at Dodofie.”

More meat, they say, does not spoil the soup. While we are at it, it is pertinent to ask what has happened to President Mahama's pledge to cut his salary and those of his ministers by 10 percent to build more CHPS compounds.

We would like to believe the President and his men and women would give the necessary answers as they prepare for their campaign launch at Cape Coast on Sunday.