REGIONAL Medical Officers (RMOs) in the country have been directed to prepare a special plan to prevent maternal deaths and those who will fail to ease the problem will have disciplinary measures taken against them.
The directives were issued yesterday in
Dar es Salaam by the Minister for Health, Community Development, Gender,
the Elderly and Children, Ms Ummy Mwalimu, during an international
consultative forum on maternal health programmes.
Ms Mwalimu said each one must be
innovative enough to come up with better plans to help save the lives of
mothers and children in the country. “We still have a long way to go in
eliminating this problem.
Thus, each RMO should outline their
plans on better ways to curb the problem. We will asses you on how you
contribute in solving this,” she noted. She further said the challenge
of addressing maternal deaths is compounded by the lack of accurate
data.
The RMOs were also directed to provide a
report on maternal deaths after every three months. On the government
commitment to control maternal deaths she said for the 2016/17 fiscal
year the budget for medical drugs andl equipment will be more than four
times the figure for the previous years.
Expounding further she said among the
3,000 health centers in the country only
159 have been upgraded to be able to provide obstetric care which means
there was much work to do as only ten per cent were reached. The forum
was prepared by Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) in
collaboration with the Ministry of Health and United Nations Children’s
Emergency Fund (UNICEF).
The main objective of the forum was to
share challenges, lessons learned, best practices and achievements of
the East African countries. Participants included RMOs from various
regions in Tanzania, Development Partners, representative for Ministry
of Healthy from Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Other Health stakeholders.
Earlier, KOICA Vice- President, Mr Kwon Taemyon said Tanzania was one of
seven biggest countries which have highest maternal deaths.
Mr Taemyon further said that one of the
key intervention areas of KOICA was maternal and child health. He also
said that KOICA was a new member of the Health Basket Fund alongside
seven other partners. They have various ongoing projects in Chanika,
Mbeya and Shinyanga.
“We are constructing state-of-the- art
Maternal and Infant hospital at Chanika village in Dar es Salaam to
bolster maternal health services and promote the achievements of the
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) goals,” he elaborated.
He said after completion the hospital
will encompass more than 150 beds for mothers and their new born babies,
also high-tech equipment including Obstetric Gynaecology Ultrasound,
X-rays and anaesthesia services will be available.
Tanzania has been hailed for registering
major achievements in attaining Millennium Development Goals (MDGs),
Number Four for reducing the under-five mortality from 161 per 1,000
live births in 1990 to 54 per 1,000 live births now
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