By Prince J Musa in Kenema
The Minister of Health and Sanitation Dr. Austin Demby has called on Paramount Chiefs in Kenema district to support the medical team in mitigating maternal mortality in the district.
Addressing the chiefs and other local authorities on 11 June 2021, Dr. Demby spoke about his primary motive of going to Kenema which was for the launching of the scale laboratory maternity training for midwives but said he has used the chance to engage paramount chiefs during the district health management team’s engagement with the chiefs.
He said over the years, Sierra Leone has been referred to as one of the countries with the highest maternal mortality rates but that recent efforts by the government in collaboration with development partners led to a reduction of close to forty percent. He said the government is determined to reduce it further. He described as unacceptable the 29 maternal recorded deaths in the district from January to date.
The Minister stated that from the report by the district medical officer, one of the factors responsible for the increased maternal deaths is that people are still delivering at home in the hands of Traditional Birth Attendants even when there are facilities and staff to support safe delivery in the community health facilities, but believed engaging the chiefs would encourage them to revisit the bye-laws against home labour in their chiefdoms and to deal with defaulters accordingly. He said they should help encourage pregnant women to deliver in health facilities where the technical experts are available.
Dr. Demby maintained that the other side of the coin is to ensure that the medical people are well prepared and ready to receive patients coming to the facilities, otherwise if patients are not well received by the health workers, definitely they will stop going there which will be more dangerous for the health system in the country. “Any loss of one life in this country in the hands of delivery is a big loss to the nation, which government stands against it’’, he said.
Dr. Demby disclosed that there are 1,400 Peripheral Health Units across the country with better access and that their next plan is to ensure quality service delivery as the ministry has secured 76 billion Leones to rehabilitate all the major hospitals in the country which includes drugs availability and staff complement.
In his statement, the District Medical Officer Kenema, Dr. Donald Samuel Grant said their engagement with paramount chiefs came about as a result of their data based report on maternal deaths that is not good for the image of Kenema and they as a team wouldn’t want to wait until the year end before reviewing their data.
He stated that the data has informed them that they need to take action. He said from their findings there are multiple factors responsible for maternal deaths such as delay by the community in taking the pregnant women to health centers on time, and lack of accessibility to the facility as another factor. He said one way the government can address the issues of delay was to provide ambulances services as Kenema has five such vehicles to pick up patients but that sometimes people give false alerts just to misuse the services. “Ambulance service is not to collect bodies but sick people for the
Hospitals,’’ he said.
He stated that the community should support the ambulance service in case of any misuse of the facility and that the district medical team has communicated with the central government to handle the aspect of fuel for a certain period of time.
Responding, the Chairman Council of Paramount chiefs Kenema district,
Foday Steven Kpakira Fabba of Dodo chiefdom said teenage pregnancy is one of the contributing factors for maternal deaths as most of the victims are underage girls that become pregnant which he said, is posing serious social and health problems in the community.
He said another concern to them as paramount chiefs is that some of their people do not get access to the vaccinations, as many health workers do not reach remote areas.
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