A campaign against maternal mortality mobility and death has been launched by the Ghana Health Service (GHS) in the Volta region.

The Zero Tolerance for Maternal Death campaign is one of several initiatives running in the region to raise awareness of maternal health.

This is in response to the region's current record of 102 fatalities per 100,000 live births, according to the acting regional director of health, Dr. Senanu Kwesi Djokoto.

In 2021, some 35 women lost their lives to pregnancy or pregnancy-related conditions in hospitals in the Volta region with the region recording 41 deaths in the previous year.

This, according to Dr. Senanu Kwesi Djokoto, is unsatisfactory and falls short of both the regional goal of having no maternal mortality and the international goal of having no more than 70 fatalities per 100,000 live births.

Dr. Djokoto explains that the record of the region is affected by three factors.

“In the Volta region, the causes of maternal mortality mainly go along the three delays -first of all, people taking the decision to seek care when they have to seek care, then usually, when there are emergencies, people moving from their homes to the various facilities is another challenge, then the final challenge is the emergency response in our hospitals; I must quickly add that we have made progress, that is why our maternal mortality has declined significantly.”

“But we have a target as a region that no woman should die out of maternal mortality. Secondly, if you look at the global efforts towards reducing maternal mortality, the target is that not more than 70 women should lose their lives per 100,000 live births from pregnancy or pregnancy-related conditions,” Dr. Djokoto stressed.

The Zero Tolerance for Maternal Death campaign is, therefore, a multi-stakeholder approach to dealing with the issue.

“There is a whole journey ahead of us -we have to strive hard to be able to reach this point.”

“So as health service in conjunction with all other governmental agencies, we are looking at a number of strategies; building the appropriate leadership, ensuring that we have the logistics and skilled personnel, ensuring that we put across the appropriate advocacy and also ensuring that everybody else -our religious leaders, our stakeholders are very much involved in our activities and understand it well,” he stated.

Dr. Djokoto also revealed that 40 out of 100 pregnancies in the region are unplanned -a number that indicates that not many people are making use of the various family planning methods available.