The European Union (EU) has supported the Christian Aid and Send-Ghana, both non-governmental organisations, with a grant of 656,180 Euros to implement a project in maternal healthcare in some 30 districts of the Northern, Upper East and Upper West regions.
The three-year project is aiming at contributing to the effective delivery of maternal health services in Ghana with a specific objective of ensuring that citizens in the selected districts effectively held government to be accountable, which would lead to improved accountability, responsiveness and service delivery in the area of maternal health by 2016.
The project dubbed: “Improving maternal health service delivery through participatory governance” also aims at helping the country to meet some of the Millennium Development Goals especially on health.
Speaking at the launch and inception meeting with beneficiary districts in Tamale on Wednesday, Madam Joyce Ashun, Country Manager of Christian Aid, said it was important for the two NGOs to come together to seek funding to help address maternal mortality.
She said maternal mortality was a canker in the country killing pregnant women and appealed to all stakeholders in the health sector to collaborate effectively to ensure that the country met the Millennium Development Goal (MDG5) by 2015.
She specifically appealed to the beneficiary districts of the project and the three Regional Coordinating Councils to support the initiative by playing their respective roles to ensure that maternal mortality issues were addressed.
Mr George Osei-Bimpeh, Country Director of SEND-Ghana, said young women across the three northern regions had been particularly affected by poverty and social exclusion while the country remained starkly off-track to achieve MDG-5 for maternal mortality rates.
He said the project was also aiming at enabling citizen groups, especially the rural poor and young women, to increase their understanding of maternal health issues saying, “Sensitisation work will prioritise on equipping communities with knowledge and skills to enable them to adopt good health practices.”
He said other focussed areas of the project were family planning, skilled delivery and emergency obstetric and new born care, which were in line the National MDG5 Acceleration Framework and the Country Action Plan for maternal health.
Mr Bede Ziedeng, Northern Regional Minister in a speech read on his behalf, commended SEND-Ghana and the Christian Aid for their efforts to help government achieve MDG5 by 2015 and gave the assurance that his outfit would support the project to succeed.
Dr Akwasi Twumasi, the Northern Regional Director of the Ghana Health Service, said the fight against maternal mortality could only be won if men were taken on board and serious sensitisation at the rural communities for men to allow their wives to attend antenatal care.
He said the rate at which women were dying during child birth in the Northern Region was very appalling saying, “Last year alone some 104 women died through child birth and if you multiply the number by the 10 regions, you will get a very bigr figure”.
Source: GNA
