Sky Rocketing Teenage Maternal Deaths Worries Gov’t
Our reporter
The sky rocketing number of teenage maternal mortality rate that is claiming young mothers is worrying the government, Dr. Joyce Moriku Kaducu, the State Minister for Health, Primary Health Care has revealed.
Dr. Kaducu noted that the Maternal Mortality still remains a big challenge among the teenage mothers who approximately contributed to 18% of all maternal death.
“Teenage pregnancy is still high at 25% national average and in some regions we have 30%.This has worsened during the Covid19 pandemic,” said Kaducu.
She added that unsafe abortion especially among young women is among the leading cause at 22% rate.
Data from the 2016 Uganda Demographic and Health Survey (UDHS) indicates that the Maternal Mortality rates had dropped from 448/100,000 Live Birth 2011 to 336/100,000 Live Birth in 2016.
Kaducu was speaking to journalists at the Media Centre, updating the general public on matters of Maternal Health during the COVID-19 pandemic and the FY2020/21.
The Minister also highlighted that, “While Bleeding (hemorrhage) was still the leading issue in the cause of maternal death with a percentage of 42% of all deaths reviewed and 90% postmortem, 36% of the maternal death occurred among young mothers (24 years and below) of which these could have probably been in school,”
This, she said calls for a worrying state as Maternal and Child Health (MCH) was a key indicator for measuring any development in a country Uganda inclusive, she added.
Dr. Kaducu therefore pointed out the three groups of factors (Three delays) that were stopping women and girl from accessing the maternal care they needed including; the delays in decision making to seek health care, delays in reaching the health facilities and the delays in receiving adequate quality health care which were brought about by many factors.
However she noted that there has been an integrated approach that was used by the health workers to address each issue women face when trying to access safe child birth.
“We have registered improvement in the number of women attending the first antenatal care to 95%. The challenge now still remains with completing at least four visits as the numbers are still low (42%),” she said..
Adding that implementing antenatal care could help prevent, detect and treat problems such as malaria, anemia, HIV/AIDS and other infections, which were indirect causes of maternal death
Kaducu also noted that, the government initiated other programmes aimed at improving of maternal health which included among others; providing emergency obstetric care which addresses among others hemorrhage, unsafe abortion which were the causes of maternal deaths, provision of skilled attendance at child birth to detect and attend to complications in case there’s any, providing of support to both natural and model family planning methods and mostly putting in place polices that seek to address teenage pregnancy.
All these services provided in over 300 Health Centre III that were recently upgraded especially in the rural areas which were mostly affected by the problem.
She therefore urged the community to be involved in promoting infant feeding practices, childhood immunization and care-seeking for childhood illness as their participation helped improve on maternal health utilization reducing maternal mortality.
“Men involvement is a driver to facilitate women to seek health facilities and utilization of appropriate family planning methods, promotes awareness about obstetric danger signs and improves communication among partners,” she said
Adding that, acquiring information enables men to make appropriate and effective health care decisions for their partners and children too.
Unfortunately, while the participation of men in the broader perspective of safe motherhood is still inadequate and low, maternal health care still remains one of the most essential services in life if the country wants to unsure that women and their babies reach their full potential for health and wellbeing.
