For the first time in Ghana, five health professional groups have come together to form a Maternal and Newborn Health Professionals Society. The society is intended to harmonise the national efforts to ensure no woman or baby's life is at risk during childbirth.
For the first time in Ghana, five health professional groups have come together to form a Maternal and Newborn Health Professionals Society. The society is intended to harmonise the national efforts to ensure no woman or baby's life is at risk during childbirth.The group is made up of the Society of Gynaecologists and Obstetricians of Ghana (SOGOG), Ghana Paediatrics Society, Ghana Anaesthetists Society, Ghana Registered Midwives Association (GRMA), and the Ghana Registered Nurses Association (GRNA).The MNH Professionals’ Society will provide supportive supervision and training with the help of other groups to improve quality of care for pregnant mothers and their newborns.The initiative was facilitated by the DfID-funded Evidence for Action (E4A) MamaYe project.At the launch of the society, Deputy Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Gloria Quansah, said MNH was a key priority area of the health sector and all its partners, since it described the state of health systems and overall development of the population making up the basis for MDGs 4 and 5.Dr. Quansah noted that neonatal mortality continued to pose a challenge, forming about 60 per cent of infant deaths although considerable progress had been made, especially in the prevention of mortality from vaccine-preventable diseases and improvement in case of management of common childhood ailments.Addressing stakeholders, Dr (Mrs) Jemima Dennis –Antwi, Regional Midwife Adviser for International Confederation of Midwives said for Ghana to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) 4 and 5, it would require a decline in maternal deaths from 3.7 per cent to 5.5 per cent per year and 2.5 per cent to 4.4 per cent per year in child deaths.Dr Dennis-Antwi, stressed the need for Ghana to reduce maternal mortality rate to about 150 per 100,000 live births and under-five mortality to 40 per 1,000 live births in order to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 4 and 5.Prof. Richard Adanu, Country Director of E4A said: “The society would lead in looking at the Maternal Death Surveillance and Response and come out with interventions as a national response. This society is also an advocacy group to make strong statements about MNH issues in the country.”