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Apam (C/R), Jan. 22, GNA- A Foundation Fellow of the Ghana College of Surgeons, Dr Charles Ntsiamoah Takyi, has reiterated the call on Traditional Councils, and various arms of the Local Government structure to play a frontline role in the national crusade against maternal and infant mortality.
He also charged husbands, irrespective of their social status, also to live up to expectation in this regard, by ensuring that their pregnant wives took antenatal treatments seriously to avoid complications when their periods were up to deliver the babies. Dr Takyi, a notable Obstetrician/Gynaecologist and leader of the Central Region Task Force on Maternal Mortality, was interacting with the press at Apam in the Central Region on what could be done to reduce drastically maternal and infant mortality rate that had been a continuous source of worry to the Ministry of Health and professional healthcare providers and other hospitals in the country.
He suggested to Traditional Councils to enact special bye-laws to deal with men who impregnate women and failed to provide them with the requisite financial and other support that can make the expectant women sail through their nine months pregnancy period and subsequent child delivery without or with little problem.
Dr Takyi said punitive punishments should be enshrined in such bye-laws to put fear in husbands and bachelors who impregnate females.
Besides, special monitoring teams must be formed in all rural and urban towns to see to it that the proposed by-laws were being complied with by men, particularly husbands.
In addition, churches and other religious organizations, as well as the numerous benevolent movements in the country should also take up the challenge to sensitise their followers and residents of communities in which they operate on the dangers maternal and infant mortality poses to the country's future.
Traditional Councils, Town, Urban and Area Councils should also draw up long-term sensitisation programmes to hammer home to the people, especially husbands, expectant women and girls the need to co-operate with Doctors, Nurses, Midwives and Para-Medical officers on issues bothering on maternal and infant mortality in order to ensure peaceful and safe delivery all the time.
On HIV/AIDS, Dr. Takyi charged anti-AIDS campaigners throughout the country to redefine and redirect their strategies and programmes to ensure that their sensitisation activities did not focus on sexual mode of transmission of the disease alone but on other vital issues that could offer hope and inspiration to people living with the pandemic.
