Seven districts in the Eastern Region have recorded substantial improvement in skill delivery, antenatal care and post-natal care coverage.
The Eastern Regional Director of Health Services, Dr Winfred Owusu, is confident the gains made would be sustained even after development partners stop funding support.
Dr Owusu was addressing a close-out conference of the project at Koforidua.
The close-out conference ends a five-year strategic goal by the Ghana Health Service and the Japan Organisation for International Cooperation in Family Planning (JOICFP) to increase antenatal care, attendance, skill delivery, post-natal care, family planning and reduce teenage pregnancy in seven districts in the Eastern Region.
As part of the project, some health personnel and community volunteers received capacity building to help deal with the five expectations.
The Country Director for JOICFP, Dr Emmanuel Obeng, was hopeful lessons learnt from the project would stay with personnel trained and communities to ensure maternal mortality and infant mortality is reduced.
“We have ended the project but the personnel we have trained and the community members must hold on to the gains to ensure that the gains made in the five deliverables are maintained.”
Community Volunteer Mary Letsu was poised to assist more pregnant women deliver safely and appeal for logistics to make her work easier.
“I am a beneficiary of the project, and I am always happy to help pregnant teenage mothers to deliver safely. I will continue to do that in my village near Suhum. I only appeal for a motor bike to ease the burden of relying always on motor riders and drivers who are hardly available in times of need.”
The Eastern Regional Health Director says the success chalked would ensure new-borns survive whiles maternal mortality and adolescent health issues are reduced.
“Basically the support had been in the area of capacity building of staff and volunteer. Because we believe that without linkages between the community and the health system we cannot make such improvement. With the capacity building, we are able to mobilize local resources and reach the target population who are pregnant women for both antenatal care and delivery at health facilities. Substantial improvement in antenatal care coverage is skill delivery. Post natal care would ensure new-borns survive.”
He expressed concern the Eastern Region outlook on family planning figures are still not encouraging and urged couples to make use of family planning methods available.
The theme for the close out conference was ‘Empowering Communities towards Sustainability’.
By Yvonne Neequaye|3news.com|Ghana