The Talensi District in the Upper East Region recorded no maternal deaths and did not contribute to any maternal deaths recorded in the region in 2022.

Ms. Juliana Akugre Anam-erime, the District Director of the Ghana Health Service, revealed this to the GNA in an interview at Tongo and said the district recorded only one maternal death in 2021.

“Contributing to maternal death means referring a case to the next level and the person ends up dying but we did not record any and it is as a result of strong collaboration with various stakeholders including some development partners,” she said.

The District Director explained that one of the major challenges facing the delivery of quality healthcare in the district was the inability to fully relocate the District Hospital to its new site.

Ms Anam-erime said the current District Hospital was a health centre that a few other structures were added to but still inadequate to operate as a hospital that could deliver quality healthcare to clients.

“So, the Assembly acquired a piece of land at a different location and that is where a bank built a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), and the Assembly built a theatre, and it has a maternity unit and a children’s ward.

“But pregnant women will have to always travel from the new place to the old facility to pick medicines and have their laboratory investigations carried out. The other problem is that there are no lights along the road, and these are pregnant women,” she lamented.

The District Director indicated that the situation got more challenging during the rainy season due to the deplorable road that becomes slippery whenever it rains.

She therefore appealed to the government and other development partners to support the hospital with a dispensary and a laboratory at the new site, to help ease the burden on pregnant women.

Ms Anam-erime said another problem that hindered healthcare delivery, especially in rural areas, was inadequate infrastructure for Community-based Health Planning Services (CHPS) zones.

She indicated that the district had a total of 35 CHPS zones which were functional but only 15 CHPS had compounds; meanwhile, “about 78,000 people out of the 88,000 are being served by CHPS while the rest are served by the health centre”.

Mr Thomas Wuni, the Talensi District Chief Executive, acknowledged the challenge and indicated in an interview that the Assembly was working to increase infrastructure at the new site but did not have the required resources because it did not benefit from the government flagship programme, Agenda 111.

“I will discuss with some stakeholders, and we will see if we can put up a small pharmacy there,” he said.