to Management of Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital
on Wednesday, November 20, 2013.
As members of the public, we were left in a state of shock when we heard that the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) has recorded 1,130 maternal deaths between 2005 and June 2013. This unfortunate statistic released by administrators of the hospital in October is worrying.
The hospital has since expressed concern about the high rate of maternal mortality and has blamed the situation on complicated cases referred from peripheral hospitals. It goes without saying that with such high avoidable maternal deaths, Ghana stands the risk of falling far off the Millennium Development Goal 4 and 5.
Your officials say the hospital has identified 20 peripheral hospitals within its surrounding areas where consultants and senior specialists from the KATH would be attached to provide guidance and consultancy services to medical officers when the need arose.
For us, it is NOT ACCEPTABLE that an average of 132 pregnant women die every year at a leading healthcare provider such as KATH. This action being taken is very heartwarming, but as we mark World Children’s Day today, we are calling on the authorities of the hospital to act beyond this level.
• As members of the Ghanaian society, we are concerned about the specific timelines in deploying these consultants to the peripheral health centres. We want the hospital to provide clear guidelines explaining how they intend to make this strategy a success.
• While we are grateful for the figures on maternal deaths, we also expect the hospital to release figures on newborn deaths registered at the hospital within the same period. By providing better maternal health care, we can help reduce the mortality rate for newborns as well.
Preventing pregnancy associated morbidity and mortality requires more effective integration of what are, too often, multiple separate systems caring for women before they become pregnant and during prenatal, perinatal, and post-partum periods. Pursuant to this, we are calling on the authorities of KATH to, as a matter of urgency:
Maternal Health
• Ensure a well-functioning teaching hospital with high impact emergency obstetric care services and skilled care at birth to increase maternal and newborn survival.
• Offer the services of obstetricians, family physicians, and midwives managing pregnant women to peripheral clinics to ensure that quality of care is improved drastically.
• Streamline hospital referral arrangements to ensure effective management of pregnancy-associated risks.
• Provide patients who have pregnancy-related complications with greater education on those complications and how to manage them.
Newborn Health
• Improve baby-friendly health systems and high impact care to deliver lifesaving interventions, especially at the time of birth.
• Provide midwives, nurses and community health workers within the peripheral health centres with the appropriate training to prevent and respond to complications from preterm birth.
• Train midwives and all birth attendants to help newborn babies survive the “golden minute”- that first moment after birth when, if a baby is not breathing spontaneously, a simple intervention can save her life.
• Ensure that frontline officials are trained to empower women and girls so that they can make the health decisions that are best for themselves and their babies, especially to plan their families.
Administration and Accountability
• Provide better coordination and information sharing across peripheral or community-based health centres and primary healthcare providers.
• Address constraints - financial, institutional, and human resources distribution – in the health delivery system of the hospital to improve quality of care and access to services.
• Make reporting, prevention, screening and intervention practices a priority for all health officials at the peripheral health facilities.
• Better supervision and mentorship to improve quality of care, job satisfaction of health personnel, and increase the dialogue and collaboration amongst skilled birth attendants – nurses, midwives and doctor.
In conclusion, we are calling on officials of KATH to support activities that help expand access to better quality maternal and newborn health services and remove barriers to such services within the facility. KATH has a greater responsibility as the only teaching hospital within the region to ensure that no mother or child dies needlessly.
MamaYe Advocacy Coalition (www.mamaye.org.gh)
