Racheal Hesse Matey
Racheal Hesse Matey has emerged as the Ghana Health Service Best Practicing Midwife for the Greater Accra Region.
She emerged the best during a keenly contested competition which culminated in her selection at a function held at the University of Cape Coast’s Medical School auditorium last Friday.
The event was scheduled to commemorate the International Day for Midwives.
Applications were invited from interested persons in the Greater Accra Region’s health facilities following which interviews were conducted alongside presentations.
At the end of it all, Racheal from the Ridge Hospital now Greater Accra Regional Hospital topped them all.
“I am very happy for winning the best midwife award. It demands of me to do more to change the perception about midwifery and to work towards reducing maternal mortality,” she stated upon being mentioned as winner.
In her presentation, part of the requirements for the competition, titled “Birthing Together” she noted that maternal deaths have continued to decline in Ghana and currently stand at about 308 per 100,000 births down from about 760 in 1990.”
We are still a long way away from achieving the Sustainable Development Goal 3 target of 70 by 2030, she observed.
She identifies such factors as low antenatal coverage, socio-cultural factors, lack of logistics, equipment and blood at healthcare facilities and lack of adequate information on best practices. These are responsible for, as she put it, the fairly high rates Ghana experiences currently.
On what stands her apart from others, she said empathy, stressing, “I provide expert care and establish a good rapport with the women during pregnancy, labour, and puerperium. Due to this, a lot pregnant women request that I deliver their babies. And my relationship with them attracts other pregnant women to seek care from me. My greatest joy as a midwife is seeing a mother go through the pregnancy journey smoothly and have a safe delivery. My definition of a ‘Hebrew Woman’ is having a healthy mother and a baby irrespective of the modes of delivery.”
She promised to continue to educate herself and improve her knowledge so that she can help save the lives of more women and babies.
Present at the event were the Director General of the Ghana Health Service, the Deputy Minister of Health Tina Mensah and many others.
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