By Aminata Phidelia Allie
A three-day training to educate journalists on how to report maternal and newborn health started yesterday at the Kona Lodge in Freetown.
Organised by Evidence for Action (E4A), it is part of a five-year programme that will focus on improving maternal and newborn survival in six sub-Saharan countries, and is part of its “better evidence, improved advocacy and accountability to save lives”.
The programme also aims at delivering its vision through MamaYe, a campaign to save the lives of African mothers and babies “by changing fatalism to hope, hopelessness to action and maternal survival from a side-issue to political priority”.
Speaking on their objective and strategies the communications advisor, Fatou Wurie said it was a common norm that when a mother died at child birth, the baby was also likely to die, adding that for every maternal death 30 maternal disability was likely to occur. Of this number, she said, 98% of the disability occurred in developing countries with 50% in Africa alone.
Dr. Bailah Leigh, who spoke on the state of MNH in Sierra Leone, said that maternal mortality and morbidity was high in the country because most of the healthcare centers lacked either enough drugs, personnel, blood transfusion or in some cases the bad attitudes of health workers.
“Also about 87% of our women go for antenatal care at least once during pregnancy,” he said, adding that approximately 73% of maternal mortality occurred in the rural areas.
