allAfrica.com: Ghana: Achieving MDG5 Through Free Medical Care for Pregnant Women (Page 1 of 2)

"I heard the news on the television and did not hesitate to register. Now it feels so easy and better because every one can deliver at no cost at all."

These are the words of a two thirty-one year old mother of two, Charity Okine, who delivered at the Prampram Health Centre in the Dangme West district in the Greater Accra Region without any payment.

Her joy comes in the wake of President Kufuor's initiative of providing free medical care for pregnant women in the country as a means of addressing some of the challenges hindering the attainment of the fifth target of the Millennium Development Goal (MDG), which focuses on improving maternal health of women by 2015.

Charity, said six years ago when she delivered at the same health centre, she paid an amount of ¢45,000.00, which was quite a bother for her and so having delivered with no cost this time around, she finds the whole process easy and would therefore encourage other pregnant women to report to the health centre to be registered since it is now entirely free.

Already, about 50,924 pregnant women are reported to have registered throughout the country and the number is further expected to increase in the various health facilities across the country.

This intervention is critical to the attainment of the MDGs on the whole, particularly in view of the current rate by which maternal death was rising in the country, as a result of pregnancy-related problems such as hypertension, bleeding, anaemia, unsafe abortions, infections, obstructed labour among others.

State of Maternal Death

The situation is such that the Ghana Health Service envisaged that an estimated 12,000 women and 200,000 infants seem to be at risk of death while one million more will suffer disabilities if interventions are not put in place to curb the soaring numbers in time.

This, the Service says would amount to a loss of productivity to the tune of $12 million, equivalent to ¢ 108 billion due to maternal deaths while disabilities would include chronic anaemia, fistula, chronic pelvic pain, emotional depression and maternal exhaustion that would also amount to US$ 325 million.

Statistics show that the problem has been rising steadily since 1998 from 777, 813 in 1999, 851 in 2000, 954 in 2001, but saw a decrease in 2002 at 837, and went up again in 2003 at 854, decreased again in 2004 at 824 and since then has been on the rise from 912, 954 and 996 in 2005, 2006 and 2007 respectively.

The country's maternal mortality ratio currently stood at 214 per 100,000 live births and out of the number of deaths recorded last year, 148 were adolescents, representing 15.5%, while hypertension constituted 19% of the deaths, bleeding 17%, anaemia 12%, unsafe abortions 11%, infections 10%, obstructed 7% and others constituted 24%.

From the above figures, every one in thirty five women in Ghana stand the risk of dying from pregnancy in their lifetime as pointed out by the Programme Manager of the Family Health Division of the GHS, Dr. Patrick Aboagye.

These numbers are high and unacceptable because the setback it poses to the efforts at attaining set developmental goals especially the MDGs by 2015, experts have noted.

Among the many contributing factors to the problem are limited access of women to education, economic and land inheritance opportunities, participation in governance, high poverty levels, poor health-seeking behaviours, low risk perception and harmful traditional practices, as pointed out by Dr. Aboagye.

Benefits of Package

In view of this, many have lauded the Presidents intervention because it aims at reducing maternal mortality through the registration of all pregnant women, who are currently not registered under the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).

Under the package, pregnant women would be exempted from payment of the NHIS premium, registering charges, and a waive of the waiting period between registration and accessing services while any woman who reports at any accredited health facility with a pregnancy-related complication resulting in, or arising from miscarriage or abortion would be entitled to the same benefits.

In addition, any woman, who happens to have delivered at home or in an unaccredited health facility with post-partum complications during the six-week post-natal period, would be registered.

On the other hand, any woman who reports in good health during the six-week post-natal period but has failed to register during the pregnancy or delivery period would be assumed to be registering just for the purpose of obtaining a free card and therefore would not be registered.

Authorities at the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) have indicated that the initiative was designed to increase uptake of ante-natal, delivery and post-natal care. As such, pregnant women are entitled to access all services under the NHIS benefit package as long as the services are provided by accredited health facilities.

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