Angry residents of the Upper East region have lodged complaints about alleged mishandling of women in labour by midwives at the Regional Hospital.

The residents, who filed their protests to the Ghana Coalition of NGOs in Health during a stakeholders’ conference organised by the coalition in Bolgatanga, indicated that expectant mothers are turning away from the facility to avoid the claimed ill-treatment.

There are fears the said situation might have compelled some pregnant women, and possibly will encourage even more, to subscribe to home-based delivery. And the peril associated with that bold step is what many see as a threat to the globalised action against maternal deaths and infant mortality.

“Around 3:00pm on Friday 17th April, 2015, I just went to the regional hospital in labour. The woman told me to sit down and I said I cannot sit because I was already in labour. I went there holding my private part because the baby was already coming out. So, one old lady, she was also a midwife, told another lady to send me to the delivery room. That lady said I should wait. I said I can’t sit again.

"When I was trying to explain, I was trying to push at the same time. She sent me to the labour room and told me to lie down, that if I lie down and if it is not labour she would give me a slap. I opened my legs and she saw the head of the baby. She could have slapped me if she hadn’t seen the head of the baby. It hurts me a lot,” narrated Susana Anafo, with a toddler strapped to her back.

Inside the labour rooms

The complainants say the perpetrators mostly are the young midwives.

Among those who attended the conference were a few people who apparently had not suffered the alleged abuses. But they had something to share on what is said to be happening inside the hospital’s labour rooms.

The midwives were accused of beating patients in the labour rooms, yelling at pregnant women old enough to be their mothers and pelting them hard with unprintable tags.

Soaps and disinfectants among other items are highly required of every woman entering the maternity building heavy with a child. The cost of those items is said to be keeping especially rural women generally away from the hospitals. Even some women in the relatively urban communities consider the items as pointlessly too extortionate. On top of all the troubles, most of the items reportedly hardly come out from the maternity block with the patients once the midwives lay hands on them.

Fuming observers push for reforms

The purported misconduct of the midwives has ignited calls for reforms in the region. A number of participants at the conference ascribed the misconduct to inexperience on the part of the accused health professionals.

They, thereby, condemned instant admission of senior secondary students into midwifery schools and immediate engagement of fresh midwifery graduates as midwives, saying they are too young and too distracted by many things to fit into the shoes of women in labour.

“If I had the power,” the Assembly for Gowrie in the Bongo District, Donald Abongo Atiah, vowed. “I wouldn’t allow any girl just after SHS then you move into the midwifery school that you want to become a midwife. It’s not the best. At least, women who have ever experienced birth should be trained as midwives so that as the pain is with them they can also take care of those who are to be delivered.”

Mr. Atiah recounted an incident involving a woman inside the labour room at the time he was around the same health facility to visit a relative. The woman called for attention persistently but the midwives, according to him, shut her up on the grounds that her time for delivery was not due.

“It’s like the child was coming out and the woman called for support. But they told her they have given her time and time is not due for her to deliver; therefore, they won’t come. But before they realised, the child just came out. Then, they were now shouting on the woman, ‘you want doctors to come and punish’ them or whatever,” he relayed.

Brusilla Aboyom, another resident of the regional capital who has a number of examples of abuses to share, conveyed the views of many when she noted that midwifery standards had fallen because many are into the profession just for jobs.

“I have a friend who said to be honest to herself she doesn’t like the nursing but because of job problem. She rushed into nursing because if you go university or polytechnic and you complete you will not get something to do or you will have to come home and apply before you will now get jobs,” she stated.

Abused patients may die in silence

Midwifery authorities are very unhappy following the reports lodged against the region’s biggest maternity unit. They are not concealing their fears about abused patients who may return to the hospital worse than before or break down in silence.

“When someone comes to you and you don’t receive the person well, the person will not be interested in coming back to you again. And if they don’t come to us, they will end up somewhere that will lead to problems. They may get complications and will not want to come. So, they will end up coming either to us worse or they will even die or have certain problems which nobody will know about,” Madam Rebecca Kpare, Upper East Regional Officer in charge of the Nursing and Midwifery Council, told newsmen at the close of the conference.

She added: “We will continue to talk to them. And we also hope to talk more. Anytime that we are having workshops, we will try to build their capacity on customer care. That is even going on. Most of the hospitals have organised workshops on customer care and we have been educating them how friendly they should be on the clients when they come.”

Efforts to have the Upper East Regional Director of Health, Dr. Kofi Issah, speak to the allegations did not yield any answer. He did not reply to an interview notice forwarded to him before this report was filed.

Coalition holds differing views

The Upper East regional branch of the Ghana Coalition of NGOs in Health has taken a differing position over the public calls for reforms.

According to the union’s Regional Chairman, Noble Asakeya Alagskomah, the idea is not workable mainly because health professionals already are in short supply throughout the region.

“To suggest that they should not allow SSS leavers to do midwifery is not going to be possible. What we rather need to do is for Ghana Health Service to intensify their capacity building programmes for such staff or such students. It is hitherto the period where you have a system like this, people wanted to be nurses and you can say that they were called to that profession. Today, the story is different? far, far different. They go into nursing because they want jobs. So, whichever jobs will come their way, they will go in for.

“What is important is for Ghana Health Service to build their capacities on human relations as well patient-staff relations. That is the only way we can have the sort of relationship that clients expect from health professionals. Why do you have to shout on pregnant women? Why do you have to delay in attending to call from a woman who is in labour? That delay sometimes brings about maternal mortality,” Mr. Alagskomah remarked.