Interestingly, the erstwhile government stood its ground to make sure no woman died while giving birth. By that authorities and health experts make sure health workers deliver as expected. Nowadays, the laissez-faire attitude of some of our health workers has even compounded the whole issue, as seen in the case of the Bakau woman, who died a few weeks ago.
Hardly a week or two passes without hearing another episode involving a woman dying while being delivered of her baby. Most of these women died from preventable childbirth related complications that could have been addressed easily and immediately without ending in fatality.
Yesterday Mbama Care Foundation, a Gambian Charity in partnership with Gambian Women’s Lives Matter held a peaceful march against the alarming rate of maternal mortality in the country. The campaign was conceived after a campaign against maternal mortality had gone viral on social media since last Thursday following reports of another woman dying at child birth.
Generally, Africa has some of the highest rates of maternal, infant and child mortality. As figures suggest more than 500,000 women die in childbirth or from complications related to pregnancy each year, according to UNICEF.
Therefore, a lot of work is needed to promote our maternal, infant and child health in order to curb the alarming maternal mortality in the country. And The Gambia needs to focus a lot on strengthening health care and delivery systems.
In fact, few years ago, this gave birth to the continental campaign dubbed -The Campaign on Accelerated Reduction of Maternal Mortality in Africa – CARMMA – that was launched few years ago by the African Union, with the support of UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund.
In fact, this concept is in line with the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
However, it also reminds us all of the need to have a very comprehensive and integrated approach to health with more emphasis on women and children.