Agency Renews
Maternal Death Reduction Drive
The
UN Population Fund (UNFPA) says it is set to revamp its family
planning campaign to reduce the number of deaths associated with
child-birth among African women.
UNFPA's Senior Programme Adviser on Reproductive and Maternal
Health, Dr Eric Akinyele, said in an interview in Johannesburg,
that research has shown that lack of proper family planning and
low usage of contraceptives was responsible for 40 per
cent of the deaths of pregnant mothers.
’’Abortions contribute a certain percentage of the deaths
while HIV/AIDS related complications are responsible for 21 to
55 per cent,’’ he explained.
He said the UN and the AU had slated a major campaign that will
re-position family planning, among the main public health policy
interventions, to reduce the number of women dying during
child-birth, mostly known as maternal deaths.
Akinyele said family planning has been viewed as an
'external' tool to reduce the African population without
adequate emphasis on the main benefits of properly planned
families.
Concerted effort
The African Union Commission (AUC) has launched a plan to
accelerate a campaign to reduce maternal mortality, of which the
UNFPA is a leading advocate.
’’There was an initial loss of momentum on family planning
since 2003 but there are some efforts to re-position it within
Africa. The most recent one was at a conference on family
planning in Uganda on 19-21 November," Akinyele said.
UNFPA experts said since the launch of the AU Campaign on
Accelerated Reduction of Maternal Mortality (CARMMA), in May
2009, 10 countries in Africa have joined the campaign, aimed at
drastically reducing the number of women dying while giving
birth.
Some of the countries that have joined the first phase of CARMMA
include Chad, Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia,
Nigeria, Swaziland and Rwanda.
’’Africans used to have several children because they did not
know which child would live until the parents grow old. They
feared having fewer children because of the high rates of
under-five mortality. Now, we need to tell them to have quality
babies,’’ Akinyele said.
The UN expert said family planning offers mothers an opportunity
to have babies when their bodies were healthier, thus increasing
the rate of child survival.
’’ The Africans are beginning to see the effects of quality
children. It is no longer about having more children, but having
quality children that the parents can send to good schools. The
parents are beginning to see the advantages,’’ he said.
The UNFPA is taking the lead in implementing the safe motherhood
programme and the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and a host of
other UN agencies are expected to join in accelerating the
delivery of the plan in 2010.
The programme is planned for launching in 10 African countries
every year until the 53 AU member states are covered.
Africa's public health planners have faced severe criticism over
the manner in which the family planning, mostly focusing on
contraceptives use, was administered.
In Akinyele’s words, ’’the initial conception was that family
planning was to reduce the populations. But with family
planning, the chances are that the baby would be healthier
before the next one is born, again because some beliefs in
Africa is that a mother cannot breastfeed if they are pregnant
with the next baby.’’
Cultural impact
He also said that some pregnant mothers were forced to avoid
eating some foods due to cultural beliefs, although those foods
are critical to the mother's health and their unborn child.
’’Culture is a big barrier. These are the major impediments
to maternal health. They are causing a lot of deaths in the
region. It is a taboo for a man's wife to die, there are also
the deaths caused by early marriages, where conception takes
place with the first menstruation when the mother's pelvis is
still too small for the baby to pass,’’ the health expert
warned.
Successes
Akinyele however, said that there had been "pockets of
success" among the African countries that have joined CARMMA,
with some of those countries reducing the number of women dying
during childbirth due to community interventions.
In countries where the successful results were returned, he said
the insistence of the local populations on having all mothers to
deliver safely, through a plan tagged, ’community maternal
audit’, have helped authorities to reduce the number of
deaths .
Most of these community interventions have been recorded in
Malawi, Rwanda and Uganda, where the villagers undertake the
health reviews and confront authorities.
Nigeria has also managed to cut the number of women deaths from
1,100 for every 100,000 live births in 2005 to 545
per 100,000 in 2009.
PANA/NAN/Yinka
