Free Pregnancy Care Policy Begins (Front Page)

Story: Lucy Adoma Yeboah
THE Minister of Health, Major Courage Quashigah (retd), has announced a complete take-off of the government’s policy of free medical care for pregnant women under the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) from this month.
The policy was first announced by President J. A. Kufuor after a trip to the United Kingdom where the British government pledged £42.5 million to support the government’s efforts at reducing maternal mortality as envisaged in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Speaking at the opening of a two-day National Consultative Meeting on the Reduction of Maternal Mortality in Accra yesterday, Major Quashigah said to make the women enjoy the full benefit of the policy, they were also exempted from the payment of premium under the NHIS.
“We will also waive the three to six months waiting period so that pregnant women can enjoy the services immediately they are registered,” he pointed out.
The Health Minister said since it had been deemed urgent to address the high maternal mortality rate in the country, he had tasked a special team to focus on the strategies to ensure that “we double the coverage of supervised deliveries from the current 35 per cent to 70 per cent” within two years.
He expressed the hope that the policy would help reduce the financial barriers that women faced in accessing healthcare services during pregnancy and delivery.
Major Quashigah added that a monitoring system had been put in place to enable the health sector to identify the bottlenecks in the implementation of the policy and also put in the necessary corrective actions.
The Chairperson of the National Population Council (NPC), Mrs Virginia Ofosu-Amaah, said the meeting was held at a time when the world’s attention was being re-focused on the tragedy of maternal mortality in developing countries.
Mrs Ofosu-Amaah, who was also the chairperson for the occasion, reminded the participants of a conference in September 2000 at which about 190 member countries of the United Nations (UN) signed up to the MDGs which provided a powerful social development for all countries.
She pointed out that the fifth development goal, which was the focus of the two-day consultative meeting in Ghana, aimed at reducing maternal mortality by 75 per cent between 1990 and 2015.
“The concern today is that for countries in sub-Saharan Africa, including Ghana, this goal is desperately off track and is most unlikely to be achieved by the target date,” she observed.
She pointed out that there were conflicting figures on the ratio of maternal mortality in the country, adding that as the nation’s institutional records put it at 214 deaths per 100,000 live births, the United Nation’s Children Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) put the national estimate at 560 deaths per 100,000 live births.
“This means that we do not have a clear awareness of the dreadful magnitude of maternal deaths. Irrespective of which figure one uses, you will agree with me that the levels are deplorable,” she noted.