Dabillipuo, (UW/R), Aug. 28, GNA – The residents of Dabillipuo, a farming community in the Wa East District, are appealing to the Ghana Health Service (GHS) and the District Assembly to help provide the needed facilities to enhance access to maternal healthcare service in the community.
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They said the lack of a labour room at the Community-based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) compound was impeding access to quality maternal healthcare services, including skilled delivery.
Mr Andrews Dari Dagil, a health community volunteer at Dabillipuo, made the appeal in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA).
He indicated that pregnant women at Dabillipuo and surrounding communities who depended on the CHPS facility sometimes went through a great ordeal during childbirth.
Mr Dagil cited instances where pregnant women in labour delivered in tricycles while trying to access skilled delivery services at the nearest health facility at Busa, which is over 20 kilometres from the community.
He lamented: “We have a midwife here at the CHPS compound, but there are some of the delivery cases they refer to either Busa or Wa because we don’t have a delivery room here.
“From here to Busa is very far, and the road is very bad. I can count many instances where pregnant women delivered on their way to Busa to deliver. Our pregnant women’s lives are always at risk.”
Madam Monica Dari Antria is one of the many women in Dabillipuo who delivered in a commercial tricycle about a month ago while travelling to Busa for skilled delivery services at the Busa Health Centre.
She explained: “It was not easy for me. I nearly died. I had to lie in the tricycle with the blood and everything to the health centre.”
In a shaky voice, perhaps, resulting from the memory of the pain she went through during delivery in the tricycle, Madam Antria, lamented the difficulties they go through in that community to deliver.
“We have seen the importance of delivering in the hospitals, but to go through that difficulty just to get to the health facility to deliver is worrying us,” she said.
The people made a passionate appeal to the stakeholders and benevolent community to come to their aid by providing a delivery room at the community’s CHPS compound to help reduce the ordeal pregnant women go through.
Meanwhile, GNA gathered that the midwife’s office at the Dabillipuo CHPS compound had been converted to a makeshift labour room, which is not fit for purpose.
Also, the office space at the CHPS compound served as the Outpatients Department (OPD) and detention room with benches serving as beds.
Until the challenge in accessing improved maternal healthcare services by women in Dabillipuo is addressed, the government’s desire to reduce maternal deaths and achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3 would be a mirage.
For instance, SDG target 3.1 required that “By 2030, reduce the global maternal mortality ratio to less than 70 per 100,000 live births.”
Target 3.2 also sought to reduce neonatal mortality to at least as low as 12 per 1,000 live births and under-5 mortality to at least as low as 25 per 1,000 live births by 2030.
By Philip Tengzu, GNA
