The Ashaiman Municipal Health Directorate reduced maternal mortality in 2019, recording only three cases against six cases in 2018.

Mrs Patience Ami Mamattah, Ashaiman Municipal Director of Health Services, announced this during the Directorate’s annual performance review, which was on the theme: “Improving Health Status in the Ashaiman Municipality; The Role of Partners and Stakeholders”.

Mrs Mamattah added that her outfit strategized and worked towards reducing the maternal mortality rate in the area.

She added that some of the measures accounting for the reduction included the formation of maternal/stillbirth audit committee who audited all mortalities to find the causes and gave recommendations.

She said the Directorate ensured that all recommendations from the committee were implemented to avoid future recurrence.

The Health Director further noted that the local midwives received on the job coaching and training on protocols in addition to weekly activity and performance reviews.

She said quality improvement structures were strengthened at the Ashaiman Polyclinic while Trinity Hospital acquired an anaesthesia machine to aid in its service delivery to pregnant women.

The Municipality in 2019 also saw a reduction in its still births rate from six in every 1000 live births in 2018 to three in every 1000 live births translating into a total of 24 (15 fresh and nine macerated) in 2019 compared to the 43 in 2018.

She further stated that they were able to scale-up the proportion of newborns receiving postnatal care within 48 hours from 83.6 per cent to 91.8 per cent.

Mrs Mamattah trumpeting her outfit’s other achievement in health service delivery, disclosed that the Directorate had fully integrated into the maternal and child health services, the elimination of mother to child transmission of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) adding that its immunization coverage also moved from 98.3 per cent to 105.7 per cent.

Meanwhile, malaria topped the Out Patient Department (OPD) top ten conditions for the year 2019 with a total of 20,944 cases seen, followed by 17,947cases of upper respiratory tract infections, 14,809 hypertension, 13,133 acute urinary tract infection, 11,652 anaemia and 10,574 gynaecological conditions.

The remaining top 10 conditions are 10,121 typhoid fever, 10,052 diarrhoea diseases, 9,820 pneumonia and 8,720 rheumatism and other joint pains.