December 06, 2006	Wednesday	Ziqa'ad 14, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, Dec 5: Mother-child mortality rate has seen no reduction during the last four years indicating that maternity health care has made no improvement.

Since 2002, according to the Economic Survey, the ratio of maternal mortality rate (MMR) is constant at 350 to 400 deaths per 100,000 live births, whereas the infant mortality rate (IMR) is 82-83 per 1,000 births and the death rate among children under five is 103 per 1,000 live births. For the Millennium Development Goals, Pakistan is obligated to achieve MMR by 140 per 100,000 live births and IMR to 40 per 1,000 births by the year 2015.

“A mother dies of pregnancy related problems after every 20 minutes in the country at the time of giving birth, or forever become burden on the family due to long term diseases,” Project Director Women Health Programme (WHP) Shaheen Masood told reporters here on Tuesday.

Lack of timely obstetrics facilities or unskilled birth attendant are the main culprits for these alarming deaths among mothers, Mrs Masood explained adding Pakistan ranked second after Afghanistan where the situation of MMR and IMR too was not so encouraging. The other two countries facing identical conditions like Pakistan are the war-ravaged Iraq and Rwanda.

Severe bleeding during pregnancy, infections, anaemia and heart conditions and obstructed labour are also one of the causes for the high maternal death while wide disparity between rural and urban population, income groups, lack of education, poor means of communication and demographic factors also features significantly. About half of the women population in the country, Mrs Masood said, was either malnourished or anaemic besides the untimely death or disability of a woman, a tragedy in itself, adversely affects the health of her children, household productivity and the national economy, in turn aggravating poverty.

More than 80 per cent of the deliveries in the country are conducted at home by birth attendants, while emergency obstetric care is not available to most women especially in the rural areas. Poor health of mothers and lack of health care also have a negative effect on the health of newborns as about 25 per cent of them are born with low weight. To reduce MMR and IMR by improving access to quality of health services, the government had conceived the WHP under social action programme with the assistance of the Asian Development Bank involving a total cost of $62 million, Mrs Masood said. The project was planned to be implemented in 20 selected districts, eight in the Punjab and four each in rest of the three provinces.

WHP’s contribution for improvement of women, girls and children could be assessed from the fact that at the federal level the project recruited 8,000 lady health workers (LHWs) and provided support to the ongoing reproductive health related research activities at the National Institute of Health (NIH), she said.

The programme was also instrumental in strengthening the recently established Pims Satellite Hospital with top of the line equipment for mother and child health worth Rs73 million. It also strengthened the existing health facilities at the Rural Health Centres (RHCs) of the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) and the Federal Government Services Hospital (FGSH).

WHP also identified issues hampering quality of nursing care and recommended a comprehensive framework to the government for improvement for this sector. Moreover, the project arranged permanent campus for the Pakistan Nursing Council (PNC), a regulatory body for nursing, and strengthened nursing training institutions through supply of latest referral material and equipments. WHP is also arranging a seminar on women’s issues on Thursday here at a local hotel to bring focus on those diseases which though common among women and crucial to their health have remained neglected.

Renowned medical experts from the leading hospitals of Rawalpindi and Islamabad will be presenting papers on wide range of problems including palpitations in women, thalassaemia, rheumatic heart fever, postpartum, hemorrahages, infertility, non-obstetric complications and counselling of adolescents.