The Ghana College of Nurses and Midwives (GCNM) is calling on the government to give more resources to midwives to help reduce maternal and neo-natal mortality.
The group, in a release to mark the International Day of the Midwives yesterday, and copied to The Chronicle, indicates that their contributions to the well-being of women over the years have been enormous, regardless of the scarce resources at its disposal.
The group indicated that Ghana’s maternal mortality ratio had steadily declined over the years, from 760 per 100,000 live births in 1990 to 319 per 100,000 live births in 2015, and progressively to 308 per 100,000 live births in 2017.
They also said that statistics from the World Health Organisation and the Ghana Health Service indicates that the neo-natal mortality rate has also declined from 32.1 per 1,000 live births in 2007 to 23.9 per 1,000 in 2018.
However, the Sustainable Development Goal has capped the success rate of Maternal and Neonatal Mortality to 70 per 100,000 live births and 12 per 1,000 live births respectively, which the country has not been able to achieve, hence the need to allocate more resources to that effect.
They also observed that the nation is still striving hard to achieve its maternal related Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG3) which seeks to ensure healthy lives and promote the well-being of all, of which maternal and neo-natal health are key components.
The group said it acknowledges the contribution the government has made so far to ensure quality service delivery, but thinks the government can do more.
They said the Government of Ghana mandated the Ghana College of Nurses and Midwives, since 2015, to be the only institution in Ghana to train specialist nurses and midwives to augment and to complement the already existing system.
However, more work needs to be done, hence, the need for more resources to be given to midwives.
The group also seized the opportunity to throw light on some training it renders to Ghanaians, and asked all who seek to be midwives and would want to impact society immensely, to get on board.
They said the GCNM seeks to promote specialist education, continuous professional development, and post-graduate nursing and midwifery and related programmes, as well as contribute to the formulation of policies to improve health outcomes.
As a result, the two divisions, namely Nursing and Midwifery, give tutorials that ensure that one becomes a professional upon completion.
They said the faculties under the division of midwifery take students through Well Woman Care, Advanced Midwifery, and Neo-natal Health Nursing, and the target has always been to provide and promote Reproductive, Maternal, New-born and Child Health (RMNCH) issues in Ghana.
The programme also aims at equipping its members on the use of available best evidence-based practices to improve the varied care provided to women and their infants.
The group concluded that midwives in Ghana want to provide effective, efficient, timely and cost-effective care to mothers and their infants, which will in turn create a positive impact on work output, innovations and a strong workforce, which will directly affect Ghana’s GDP, since women are the majority of the nation’s work force, hence, the need for the government to resource them.
The post Give us more resources to reduce maternal mortality -GCNM tells gov’t appeared first on The Chronicle Online.
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