Upper East Health Service distributes midwifery kits

The Upper East Regional Health Directorate has distributed 150 midwifery kits and scales to 150 Community-based Health Planning and Service (CHPS) compound zones in the Region as part of measures to improve maternal and newborn health care service in the Region.

The Regional Director of Health Services, Dr Koku Awoonor-Williams, said this during a Regional Health Sector Half Year Performance Review Meeting held in Bolgatanga.

He said the Region was continuously training and posting midwives to health facilities and deliveries supervised by health professionals had improved from 33 per cent in half year 2012 to 37 per cent for the period under review, half year 2014”, he said.

He said whereas antenatal coverage was not encouraging, post natal coverage had improved from 32 per cent in 2012 to 37 per cent from the period under review, half year 2014.

Dr Awoonor-Williams said notwithstanding the fact that the Region had good records on maternal mortality ratio, it was however unfortunate that the number of maternal deaths increased from 18 in half year 2012 to 22 in half year 2014 and added that workable strategies had been put in place to arrest the situation.

He said another remarkable achievement recoded by the Regional Health Directorate was that the functional CHPS had increased from 203 in 2013 to 212 in 2014.

The Regional Director, who expressed concern about the fluctuating coverage of Family Planning, said although it had improved slightly more effort was needed to change the trend and urged District Health Directors to redouble their efforts at achieving very good results in their areas.

Dr Awoonor-Williams said despite the numerous interventions put in place to reduce the burden of malaria on Ghana as a whole, it continued to be in the lead of OPD cases even though the cases had dropped from 40.9 per cent half year 2012 to 26.3 per cent in 2014.

“Malaria case fatality rates for children under five years has therefore reduced from 0.8 per cent in 2012 to 0.5 per cent in 2014.Percenage while bed occupancy increased from 55.2 per cent half year 2012 to 66 in 2014 half year”

He said the failure of the National Health Insurance Authority to reimburse health facilities was among the major problems facing health delivery in the Region making it difficult to procure medicines and non-medicine consumables and called on the Authority to act quickly.