Health facilities in Awutu Senya District recorded zero maternal mortality in 2022 as against one each in 2021 and 2020.
Skilled deliveries increased to 3,191 in 2021 from 3,017 in 2020 and reduced to 3,112 in 2022, while traditional Birth Attendance Deliveries also went up to 388 in 2021 from 81 in 2020 and reduced to 148 in 2022.
Madam Nancy Ekyem, Awutu Senya District Health Director, announced the outcomes at the annual performance review summit held by the Directorate at Awutu Bereku, the district Capital.
The summit was on the theme: “Sustaining the gains in service performance through improved governance and the quality of care towards the achievement of the Universal Health Coverage (UHC); the role of stakeholders.”
The district also gave 149 post-partum Vitamin “A’ to mothers in 2022 against 47 in 2021 and 51 in 2020.
She said with proper planning and team work by midwives, nurses, laboratory staff, sub-district health management team, and family members of expectant mothers, more could be achieved.
She indicated that the district had 30 Community-Based Health Planning and Service (CHPS) compounds, two Health Centres, two Polyclinics, five Maternity homes and three Private Clinics with major concerns, which included, inadequate funds for health education and surveillance, unavailability of vaccine fridges in some facilities and persistent increase in skin diseases.
Madam Ekyem indicated that their key priority during the period included intensified community-based surveillance and detection of priority diseases, especially Covid-19 cases, improved behavioural change communication, mostly on skin diseases.
She said to sustain and improve on their achievement, there was the need for the sub-district management teams, particularly midwives to continue to execute their duties professionally as required.
Madam Ekyem disclosed that Out Patient Department (OPD) attendants slightly increased from 54.1 percent in 2021 to 57.4 percent in 2022, adding that malaria still topped the 10 causes of morbidity with 18,648 in 2022 against 26,169 in 2021 and 20,799 n 2020.
It was followed by Upper Respiratory Tract Infections which had 5,508 in 2022, 7,725 in 2021 and 5,049 in 2020.
She stated that in order to improve disease surveillance, they traced contacts of five Covid-19 patients, embarked on integrated active surveillance with home visit and community activities, transported 100 percent samples of suspected cases to reference laboratories.
On the Covid-19 situation, she stated that eight suspected cases were recorded and tested and five were confirmed and all of them recovered with no deaths during the period.
“We targeted 119,041, representing 72 percent on cumulated Covid-19 vaccination coverage in 2022 and 96,422 persons were vaccinated with 50,121 persons obtaining the 1st dose, 34,185 fully vaccinated and 12,116 received boosters”, she stated.
She announced that aside from the achievement, there were a number of challenges, including the deplorable nature of roads, hampering monitoring and supervision, inadequate office space at the district level, high covid-19 vaccine hesitancy rate in most communities and increase in road accident injuries in the district.
The way forward she indicated was the strengthening of disease surveillance activities to revive community based surveillance and reporting, collaborate with community opinion leaders to get reliable volunteers and to integrate education on Covid-19 with other activities, she stated.
She thanked all who supported them in the execution of their duties, contributing to the successes chalked and urged them to continuously support them, while advising the personnel to work extra mile to save lives.
In an interview with the Ghana News agency, Naachy Ayeley Tetteley I, Adontenhemaa of Awutu Bowjiase, who was at the meeting, applauded the various health facilities in the district for their hard work during the period and emphasised the need for them to continue to offer quality health care service to persons who patronised their facilities.
She appealed to the government to provide the needed logistics and resources to health facilities to enable the
personnel continue to work without hindrances and called on people living in the district to cultivate the habit of cleanliness to help prevent contracting communicable diseases.