Gbache women lament over poor maternal health services

Women at Gbache community in the Wa West District have decried the drudgery they go through to access healthcare services, including; maternal health due to lack of a health facility.

They said pregnant women, children and the aged had to trek several kilometers to Dorimo before they could access healthcare services.

Madam Mahama Marriam, a resident of the community told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in an interview that she lost her unborn child while traveling to Dorimo Health Centre for skilled delivery.

"There was a time I was to deliver, they put me in a tricycle, we didn't reach anywhere and the baby started coming out. They can't also push it back into the women for us to reach the facility and by the time we reached the health centre at Dorimo the baby had died", Madam Mahama lamented.

She said the life of her baby could have been saved if there was a health facility at the community, which she could easily access during the emergency time when she was in labour.

Madam Munira Ibrahim, another resident noted that lack of available means of transport for them at the community also compounded their plight.

“Some of us, our husbands don't have motorbikes so if you are pregnant and want to go for Antenatal Care (ANC) or to even deliver at the Dorimo Health Centre, you have to walk, and from here to Dorimo is very far", she explained.

She complained about the difficulties women in the community were going through to access maternal healthcare services and appealed to the government and development partners to support them by providing a health facility to help ease their stress in accessing healthcare services.

Mr Kwaku Yuori, also a resident said several appeals to the Wa West District Assembly to provide the community with a health facility had not yielded any positive results.

According to him, several promises by politicians during electioneering to provide the community with a health facility were yet to be fulfilled.

Meanwhile, targets 3.1 of the Sustainable Development Goals, which Ghana was a signatory to, sought to “reduce the global maternal mortality ratio to less than 70 per 100 000 live births”.

Target 3.2 also sought to “end preventable deaths of newborns and children under 5 years of age, with all countries aiming to reduce neonatal mortality to at least as low as 12 per 1000 live births and under-5 mortality to at least as low as 25 per 1000 live births”.

It was therefore incumbent on the government of Ghana to improve timely access to healthcare services, particularly, maternal healthcare services, at all levels in order to achieve those targets by 2030.