PESHAWAR: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department has planned to reduce maternal mortality rate and enhance the number of skilled birth attendants through deployment of more community midwives.

“At present, 58 per cent deliveries are conducted by skilled birth attendants. The number will be increased to 64 per cent by 2018,” Dr Sahib Gul, coordinator of Maternal and Child Health Programme, told Dawn.

He said that health department was making more recruitments to increase the number of community midwives from the existing 1,620 to 2,500 in the next two months to enhance coverage of the mother and child health to 80 per cent from the existing 65 per cent by the year 2018.

Dr Gul said that MNCH programme, launched in 2008, had also employed 50 lady doctors to give emergency obstetric care (EmOC) to women at the public sector hospitals.

Number of skilled birth attendants to be increased

He said that each district would get 40 more CMWs to improve the coverage about neonatal healthcare and safeguard mother and their newborns from avoidable complications.

He said that one CMW was deployed for 5,000 people at community level where pregnant women got free checkups as well as medicines. The ‘health houses’ established at community receive patients from the same neighbourhoods where they are examined by CMWs.

“The programme has been a complete success for the past six years because we provide services in the same villages where CMWs are known by the people due to which the women readily visit them,” said Dr Gul.

He said that health department knew that most of the pregnant women did not visit hospitals because they did not want to be examined by the male doctors.

“It has badly affected our mother and child health indicators,” he added.

Dr Gul said that CMWs played significant role in improving mother and child health indicators because women were examined and given free medication in their own villages. “Generally, pregnant women visit health houses on monthly basis but they also visit the same in case of emergency,” he added.

In 2016, he said, 150,000 deliveries of the total 200,000 were conducted by skilled birth attendants.

The CMWs also refer women to hospitals in case of complications where they receive money from the government.

“Every woman is entitled to receive Rs2,700 for six visits for checkups to the hospitals where they also get free blood and urine tests and ultrasound under the Chief Minister’s Special Initiative for which Rs300 million has been allocated,” said Dr Gul.

He said that during the past 15 months, they gave Rs50 million to women under the programme. He said that the province was on its way to put brakes on preventable deaths, especially of newborns through innovative approaches.

“We have planned to bring down neonatal mortality from 54 per 1000 live births to 40 by the year 2018. It has been planned to cut down under-five mortality among children,” said Dr Gul.

Published in Dawn, February 23rd, 2017