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A board member of the Integrated Social Development Centre (ISODEC), Prof. Saa Dittoh, has cautioned families against the performance of traditional sacrifices for pregnant women as means of ensuring safe child delivery.

He said such practices delayed adequate health care for pregnant women, which led to complications during child delivery, causing preventable deaths.

Prof. Dittoh gave the caution at Salaga last Thursday when he launched the ‘Tackling Accountable Reproductive Health Delivery’ through a strengthened Advocacy Project being implemented by ISODEC, a non-governmental organisation, with support from STAR – Ghana, a multi-donor pooled funding agency.

The two-year project, being implemented in five districts, including the Bolgatanga Municipal, Bawku West, Binduri, East Gonja and Bunkpurugu Yunyoo, uses a web-based citizen complaints and resolution tracking system which seeks to improve quality, transparency and accountability in the health delivery system.

Quality services
The primary aim of the project is to strengthen the capacity of citizens to demand quality, accessible and transparent services and also empower them (citizens) to have a better voice in health service delivery.

Prof. Dittoh said even though such practices were reducing among some communities in northern Ghana, the rate of the decline was still low, citing Karieso in the East Gonja District as one of the communities where the practice was high.

He said people must see pregnancy purely as a health issue and seek early medical attention instead of resorting to traditional sacrifices, which only worsened the health status of the pregnant woman.

He said he was not happy that at this stage of the country’s development, pregnant women were dying  through child birth, and called for a dialogue with family leaders in those communities to educate them to desist from the practice and immediately send their pregnant relatives to hospital for medical care.

The Deputy Northern Regional Minister, Alhaji A.B.A Fuseini who read a speech on behalf of the Northern Regional Minister, described the initiative as laudable, saying its objectives were in line with the government’s commitment “to provide access to healthcare services and to ensure that quality healthcare needs of the people are met”. 

Mr Isaac Lartey, Northern Regional Health Information Officer, said the inadequate human resource situation in the region, especially in respect of doctors and nurses, coupled with very few good-conditioned motorbikes, affected the delivery of quality health care to the people.

He said ISODEC’s initiative would not only identify gaps in client satisfaction but also help outline and find solutions to infrastructural and logistical needs that would holistically lead to accessible, accountable and transparent health care for all.