Source: The New Vision
Every year, millions of mothers die while giving birth. In Uganda, at least 16 women die daily while giving birth due to complications of pregnancy and childbirth and 76 newborns in every 1,000 do not reach the age of one.
Every year in Uganda, atleast 141,000 children die before reaching their 5th birthday; 26% of these children die in the first month of their life. This toll of deaths is due to preventable health challenges such as pregnancy and childbirth complications, newborn illnesses, childhood illnesses, HIV/AIDS and malnutrition.
In Uganda, maternal and child mortality continues to pose a threat to the survival of mothers and children, this is detrimental to their rights. Uganda needs to address these challenges so as to meet the Millennium Development Goals to reduce maternal mortality from 438 per 100,000 births by 2015 for maternal, newborn and child combating HIV/AIDS by 2015.
Often times, we neglect the levels of caregiving at pre pregnancy, pregnancy, birth, post natal and childhood. If we may ask ourselves then, how many mothers, babies and children are being reached with this essential care? Just a few that we may know, yet such provision could save the most lives.
We fail to utilise certain opportunities for saving the lives of our mothers, newborn babies and children due to gaps such as the coverage gaps (antenatal care, intrapartum care and childhood immunization), quality gaps (availability of staff with rightful skills and the essential equipment and drugs) and equity gaps.
In our national average, equity gaps are often hidden due to disparities in coverage between the poor and the rich, public and private health sectors, among urban and rural communities.
Even for some primary healthcare interventions, such as immunization, the coverage is lower for poorer families.
However, there are powerful interventions that should not be forgotten; saving lives with immunization as this can be a success story of our healthcare and encouraging widespread knowledge of effective family planning practices Healthcare packages such as basic antenatal care, basic intrapartum care (by a skilled attendant during labour), emergency obstetric care as well as post natal care (counseling on maternal and newborn danger signs, immediate breastfeeding or appropriate feeding) are essential as high priority impact interventions.
There is need for better care in terms of improvements in both coverage and quality of care offered of mothers.
In Uganda, even though a high percentage of women in urban areas deliver in health centres, the few in rural areas are left in the hands of mercy.
The Government and other health care providers should scale up in offering primary healthcare interventions such as contraception, antenatal visits and immunization
The Government should also consider strengthening the gaps in the healthcare system such as referral links as well as the quality of care given to our mothers in terms of high quality implementation, especially for the poorest citizens.
In saving lives, if all these high impact interventions can reach out on to all families, many of our babies and children could be saved every year. More than half of our mothers are dying needlessly yet we can generate solutions now and be able to reach those in need and should be implemented with the quality of care required to save these lives.
Unless we draw new attention to meeting national, regional and global development goals, it will take us time to reduce maternal, newborn and child deaths at all levels Therefore policy makers, healthcare providers, health managers, training institutions must ensure competency in key lifesaving skills and care for mothers, babies and children.
Families and communities as rights holders must demand quality care, protect themselves and their children and support community healthcare initiatives and know how to seek care at the right time and in the right place.