Accra, Sept. 16, GNA - The First Lady, Mrs Theresa Kufuor on Tuesday said Africa should shift focus from the mere availability of maternal services and concentrate on improving efficient delivery of care for emergency obstetric complications in addition to the existing health services.

This she said would go a long way to reduce maternal and infant deaths, which Africa is battling with, and enhance access to quality services.

Mrs Kufuor said this in a speech read for her at the opening of a three-day conference on the Africa Regional Prevention of Maternal Mortality (RAM) networks results in Accra.

The conference, which is being attended by over 50 participants from 20 African countries, is under the theme: "Striving Towards Achieving the Fifth Millennium Development Goal in Africa: Reducing Maternal Mortality."

Participants would for the three days discuss issues such as working with communities to improve access to care and identifying problems, expanding coverage and capacity building, promoting sustainability, governance and human rights and improving related services.

The conference is being organised by RAM in collaboration with the Ghana Prevention of Maternal Mortality (GEM).

Mrs Kufuor noted that it was unfortunate that Africa had not made any significant progress towards achieving the target of reducing maternal mortality by 75 per cent from the 1990 level by the year 2015. She attributed the problem to limited resources; lack of skilled training and capacity building, access to care and the absence of political will by the African leaders.

"Most of the direct and indirect causes of the maternal mortality are underpinned by poverty, poor access to care, poor quality of care, which we know can be prevented or avoided."

The First Lady suggested that curricula of institutions providing training in midwifery and obstetrics should be revised and updated so that midwives, doctors and other health workers could acquire life-saving skills during their basic training.

She called for an enabling environment for all stakeholders, who were at the frontline of service providers to enable them to deliver quality services that would ensure "a successful pregnancy outcome, which is a smiling mother and a healthy baby".

Mr Moses Dani Baah, Deputy Minister of Health, said more efforts and resources were the most important things required in achieving the desired results and pledged Ghana's support to reducing the maternal mortality in the West Africa Sub-Region.

Dr Melville George, World Health Organisation's Representative in Ghana, said more than 500,000 women died each year from pregnancy and childbirth related conditions.

He said nearly half of those deaths occurred in Africa, with the highest number of maternal mortality worldwide and an estimated average of about 1,000 deaths per 100,000 live births.

Dr George said maternal mortality could be curtailed with minimum of investment and focus on fundamental principles of safe motherhood initiative.

Professor Fred Sai, Presidential Advisor on Population and HIV/AIDS, who presided, said governments should see maternal mortality issues as a priority and put in more resources and the political will it deserved.