Tamale, Feb. 12, GNA - Dr Sam Baffour Obeng-Adjei, Medical Superintendent of the Tamale West Hospital, has called on partners in the health sector to intensify their efforts to help reduce child and maternal mortality in the country.

He said the country had a maternal mortality rate of 215 per 100,000 mothers, which the Ghana Health Service hopes to reduce to 100 per 100,000 deliveries.

Dr Obeng-Adjei was speaking at the opening of a month-long Safe Motherhood Clinical Skills Training workshop for midwives from health facilities in the Tamale Metropolis.

The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) supported the workshop, which aimed at enhancing the quality of care in Safe Motherhood practices to reduce maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality in Ghana.

The workshop came about through the efforts of Ms Esther Gonmah Tani, a midwife of the West Hospital who attended a similar workshop in Japan and put up a case for Japan's support to train midwives in Tamale to enable them to benefit from her training in Japan. Participants would take an overview of maternal mortality and antenatal care and discuss disorders of pregnancies, complications of labour, anaemia, normal labour, infant resuscitation, palpating, and manual removal of placenta.

Dr Obeng-Adjei said the latest Ghana Demographic Health Survey in 2003, indicated a high infant mortality rate of 64 per 1,000 live births and attributed the problem to low quality of care and inadequate staffing of health personnel.

He called on the government and NGOs to provide the hospital with infrastructure, as well as helping to build a fence wall to stop people from encroaching on the hospital's lands.

Mr Hiroshi Murakami, Japan Resident Representative in Ghana, expressed his country's appreciation to Ghana's efforts at reducing infant and maternal morbidity.

He said the partnership between Ghana and Japan, as well as Ghana's health sector had expanded on all fronts and called for closer collaboration to intensify the relations and to tackle development issues.

He advised management of the Tamale West Hospital to sustain the efforts to build the capacity of midwives in the area of safe motherhood and clinical skills while continuing to work with other relevant organisations to improve the health of the people.

Mr Mohammed Amin Adam, Tamale Metropolitan Chief Executive, advised heads of institutions to put projects built for them into use before they were commissioned.

He said the government was committed to making healthcare delivery more affordable to the people by the introduction of the National Health Insurance Scheme and advised all to register with the scheme. Mr. Adam indicated that the ongoing decongestion exercise in the Metropolis would also cover government institutions adding that structures found to be unauthorized would be demolished. He advised land developers to stop encroaching state and institutional lands. 12 Feb. 07