‘Bleeding after child birth, challenge to safe motherhood’

CONCERNED by the high number of Nigerian women that still die as a result of Post partum haemmorrhage(PPH), an uncontrolled bleeding after child birth, medical experts who spoke at the 11th annual workshop of Clinical nurses and Midwives at the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, Oyo State, have called for more action to curtail this problem which they described as a millennium challenge to safe motherhood.

The Chief Executive Officer, Lifebuilders, Chief (Mrs) Grace Oluwatoye, in a keynote address at the event declared that although mortality rate from PPH had declined greatly in the developed economies of the world; it remained a leading cause of maternal death in Nigeria.

According to her, “although our maternal mortality rate reduced from 800/100,000 live births in year 2003 to 545 in 2006, what we see and hear at the community level is still not as it should be. For example, the report released last June revealed that Oyo State had the highest mortality due to PPH with 9.7 per cent of the cases ending in death coming after Katsina and Kano states.”

Chief Oluwatoye, who declared that midwives were critical to improving maternal and newborn health, attributed deaths due to post partum haemorrhage to reasons ranging from pregnant women late coming to seek assistance to lack of competent personnel and non-availability of blood for replacement as well as the issue of cost and availability of necessary services.

She called for a move from politics of health to that that aimed at ensuring safe motherhood and update training of midwives as well as urged wives of state governors to play more active role in their respective states on issues of women’s welfare.

Professor Temitope Alonge, UCH’s Chief Medical Director, described PPH a nightmare to families and a challenge that neccessitated replicating Ondo State Abiye safe motherhood project all over the country to help curtail it.

According to him, the project that was already being replicated in Rwanda, had ensured provision of antenatal care and increased skilled attendant at births from 16 per cent to over 70 per cent in Ondo state.

Professor Alonge said in strategically positioning the hospital to curtail deaths due to excessive bleeding and ensure better blood services, the hospital now has fridges for blood storage manned by medical laboratory scientists in areas of need such as the labour ward and the accident and emergency unit.

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