Vice President Samia Suluhu Hassan this week ordered all district and municipal councils in the country to make sure that in the next financial year they allocate enough budgets to boost efforts in reducing maternal and newborn deaths and morbidity in their respective areas.
She was speaking during commemoration of the White Ribbon Alliance
for Safe Motherhood in Dar es Salaam themed: “Zero Tolerance to Maternal
Death, Be Accountable.”
The VP said the allocated funds should be used to improve health service delivery in medical facilities in their localities.
Samia said the municipal councils should make sure that all
hospitals from the district level are well equipped with the necessary
health facilities , to ensure that pregnant women deliver healthy babies
and remain alive.
“If all the district and municipal councils take this task to heart
as their responsibility then they will be able to help in reducing the
number of deaths of mothers and new born babies during delivery
countrywide,” Samia noted.
“District hospitals need to have a 100 per cent of delivery
facilities at their disposal so that they can be able to help during
emergencies so that both mother and child can be saved without being
transferred to a far away hospital where they might lose their lives on
the way,” she pointed out.
According to statistics conducted 20 years ago, maternal and
childbirth rate have been slowly decreasing from 529 deaths from 100,000
lives in 1996 to 432 deaths per 100,000 lives in 2014, which is an
equivalent of 7,500 per year.
She also said that newborn deaths under one month were 21 out of
1,000 lives regardless of the statistics showing that the death on
maternal and newborn baby was decreasing. She warned that the situation
was still critical and required necessary attention to make sure that
childbirth death rates and those of under fives were well reduced.
For her part, the White Ribbon Alliance national coordinator, Rose
Mlay, asked the government to make sure that they set aside enough
budget for the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare so that it can work
toward advocating maternal and newborn health in the country.
“We want to make sure that we fight this situation that women have
been facing in the country and make sure that they can feel safe when
giving birth without thinking of any negativity such as dying due to
poor infrastructure, or absence of doctors as well as lack of raw
materials,” she noted.
SOURCE:
THE GUARDIAN
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