Pay close attention to maternal health

It would help for the government to look into addressing the reasons why we have high teenage pregnancy rates even in the face of our modest efforts at universal primary and secondary school education.

Uganda’s maternal mortality rate remains a major national challenge. The recent Uganda Demographic Health Survey reports indicate that the current maternal mortality rate is 438 per 100,000 live births. The figures alone do not adequately illustrate the scale of this problem.

It is only after faces and names of real women and mothers -most of them in the most productive years of their lives - are attached to these figures that we get to appreciate the scale of the challenge before us.
Currently, about 16 women die every day in Uganda due to complications related to pregnancy and child birth.

Much as the maternal mortality ratio has gone down, it remains difficult for us to achieve the target set by the Millennium Development Goals since Uganda ought to have reduced the maternal mortality ratio to 131 per
100,000 live births by 2015.

Still, if we were to reduce this ratio to 350 per 100,000 births, there would still be a long way to reach the expected target.
With Uganda having the highest teenage pregnancy rate in sub-Saharan Africa, half of its girls giving birth before the age of 18, this situation further raises the risk of maternal mortality.

It would help for the government to look into addressing the reasons why we have high teenage pregnancy rates even in the face of our modest efforts at universal primary and secondary school education.

According to the Abuja Declaration, Uganda committed itself to allocate 15 per cent of the national budget to the health sector, but the health budget is still at 9 per cent.
The government will need to increase financial resources for healthcare delivery if Uganda is to meet the Millennium Development Goals. But even as we move to increase the health budget, we need to figure out stop-gap measures to our maternal health mortality challenges.
According to recent research by the healthcare services agency- White Ribbon Alliance, only 42 per cent of births are assisted by a skilled health provider and 63 per cent of women in rural areas give birth at home.

Increasing funding to the health sector will help ensure that health facilities have the necessary equipment. This will improve health care service delivery and reduce the maternal mortality rate.