More rural pregnant women attend clinics

By Correspondent

The Minister for Health and Social Welfare, Dr. Seif Rashid

Tanzania has recorded a 15% decrease of traditional birth attendance this year depicting the improvement of health sectors in most rural areas of the country.

Launching the world Midwifery 20014 report this week in Dar es Salaam, the Minister for Health and Social Welfare, Dr. Seif Rashid said Tanzania Demographic and Health Survey (TDHS) report shows that there has been a great improvement on pregnant women being attended by health professionals, doctors, nurses, clinical officers in the recent years.


Dr Rashid said the country recognises the importance of midwifery  workforce in saving the lives of mothers and newborn babies as shown in the 2008-2015 National Roadmap Strategic Plan to accelerate the reduction of maternal, newborn and child deaths, repositioned by the recently launched Sharpened One Plan.

Sharpened One Plan 2014-2015 is a newly launched plan aimed at improving reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health in the country which has recognised the increase in midwifery workforce and is essential to improving quality of care in health facilities and hence save lives of mothers and newborn babies.

Dr Rashid said that midwifery is a key element of sexual, reproductive, maternal and newborn health that the country is going to prioritise and increase investment in education, deployment and retention, regulation and oversight.

The TDHS indicated that 51 percent of pregnant women in the country are assisted by health professional, 15 percent are assisted by traditional birth attendants with 29 percent being attended by their relatives or other untrained people while 3percent deliver alone without any assistance.

The TDHS however shows that while the national percentage of delivering in health facility is 50 percent, in Mara and Kigoma region only 33.3 percent of women deliver in health facilities, where as Rukwa has a record of 30 percent and Pemba North 23.6%.

Meanwhile in a bid to increase awareness and accountability and hence ensure that health facilities in Tanzania are saving women and newborn babies lives, Union of Tanzania Press Clubs (UTPC) and Evidence for Action Tanzania (E4A) a United Kingdom funded project last month started issuing a free pull-out. 

In his recent comments the UTPC Executive Director Abubakar Karsan said the pull-out jointly produced by UTPC and (E4A) Tanzania through its campaign called ‘Mama Ye’ aims at contributing to accelerating actions to end maternal, newborns and under five children deaths in the country.

 “Awareness precedes changes, UTPC and E4A Tanzania/Mama Ye! have trained two journalists from each of the 23 press clubs in the country on reproductive maternal, newborns and child health (RMNCH) to increase awareness and accountability on maternal, newborns and child health (MNCH)  issues,” said Karsan. 

 For her part, E4A Tanzania/Mama Ye! Communications and Advocacy coordinator Chiku Lweno Abood said the pull-out will be a good bridge between duty bearer and rights holders.

“It will highlight where things are working as they should and where things aren’t working as they should as we work to contribute to realization of MDGs number 4 (reduce child mortality) and number 5 (improve maternal health),” she said.