When it comes to maternal health, nobody is serious...

The following blog post was taken from the Maternal Health Channel blog site:

While visiting the Central Regional Hospital, which is currently under renovations to become a teaching hospital for students at the University of Cape Coast Medical School, we sat down to talk to the hospital’s director, Dr Daniel Ansah.

In a seven-minute bombardment of an interview, Dr Ansah was candid in his frustration, and quick to blame many for the rising levels of maternal deaths in the Central Region, including himself and his colleagues.

“Nobody is serious,” he started, going on to name a series of factors that contribute to maternal mortality. “The attitude of we ourselves, the health staff and the people in the peripheries. We wait until it’s too late to do something.”

Dr Ansah repeatedly stressed that the true blame lies in a lack of education about family planning and reproduction, stating, frankly, that in Ghana, without any sort of education about reproduction, pregnancy is unsafe and inadvisable.

“It is not the doing of the doctors. Neither is it the doing of the midwives or the pregnant woman. Pregnancy in this country is a dangerous endeavor. Let’s stop people from getting pregnant when they are not ready for it. And that is family planning," he said.

Dr Ansah believes that family planning is essential in lowering the rate of abortions amongst girls aged 13-15, the age range with the highest instances of abortions in the Central Region. He also remarks that preventing pregnancy at such a young age will lower the number of children dropping out of school prematurely and the number of broken family units.

He reiterated what we had heard from many, that superstitious traditional or spiritual beliefs often interfere with adequate medical care for expectant mothers. He spoke of pastors who come into the hospital with women in labor and advise them against having necessary caesarian sections, either stating that it is unholy for the body to be cut during pregnancy or that if the woman had previously given birth naturally, she could easily do it again.

Not even the government escaped Dr. Ansah’s candor. He pointed out that petty partisan squabbling leads to widespread disbelief in the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) and that many think of national healthcare as ineffective because of sensationalised politics.

Not all of Dr. Ansah’s comments were negative, however. He offered both praise and a suggestion. The praise, interestingly enough, was aimed towards traditional birth assistants, who Dr. Ansah says are unnecessarily marginalised.

“The impact of TBAs on birth delivery is positive. Places where people are coming from to die are not from TBAs," he stated.

He finished his interview with a poignant question, that of whom is responsible for educating women of the Central Region on maternal health.

“Who is supposed to educate who? The society should educate them! The midwives will not come to your house. The community in which they are, their assembly members or unit committee members should come and register all pregnant women so that they make sure they are attending antenatal clinics and that if there is any death, they get alarmed or concerned," he said.

We can only hope that his call is heard, and that the people of the Central Region appreciate such passion from a medical professional who, in our interview, spoke not only as a doctor, but as a man trapped in an increasingly difficult situation.