Maternal health in Uganda requires urgent attention.

Maternal health in Uganda requires urgent attention.

With barely 3 years to the 2015 MDG target 5 on Improvement of maternal health, Uganda seems quite far from her objective of reducing the ratio of maternal deaths by three quarters and working towards increasing the number of women accessing antenatal services.

Averagely, 16 women die everyday while giving birth which translates to 192 deaths every year. It is noteworthy that most of the pregnancy complications from which these deaths arise are all avoidable with just a few attitude changes and fulfillment of obligations for instance severe bleeding, malaria, health centers without health workers and mid wives mostly due to poor pay, lack of the necessary drugs and equipment therein which are leading factors for pregnant women abandoning health facilities and opting for services of traditional birth attendants who are in most cases not trained and use rudimentary, un-hygienic methods and lack of professional ethics where majority of health workers do not respond to emergency cases unless they have been financially facilitated.

Under Article 33(3) of the Constitution of Uganda, the state undertakes to protect women and their rights, taking into account their unique status and natural maternal functions in society while objective XX of national objectives and directive principles of state policy enjoins the state to use all practical measures and ensure the provision of basic medical services to the population but in spite of these pledges, pregnant women continue to die in Uganda because they cannot afford charges as little as 3,000/=, the health centers, especially in rural areas lack basic equipment and health staff to control severe bleeding or even perform a cesarean section in case of a complication during delivery that might necessitate one, some of these health centers also do not have any source of light and in some cases, candle light is all that is available especially at night for use in the delivery wards.   

Another factor responsible for maternal deaths is the lack of transport means especially ambulances, and for the few cases where these are available, their maintenance  is always hard and as a result, the patients have often been asked to fuel them before use yet in most cases, they cannot afford to. This has presented a challenge for the expectant mothers to access health facilities especially at the time of giving birth. This is because there are few ambulances available, which are sometimes diverted by the health centre in-charges to cater to their private personal needs making it almost impossible for the pregnant women, especially those on referral, to access the much needed attention and thus losing their lives.

It is high time the country works towards improving the conditions of pregnant women countrywide and this involves the contribution of government, health workers and all citizens. There is need for constant civic education on the benefits of attending antenatal visits and for the legislature to come up with a legal framework that clearly targets protection of the rights of pregnant women and spell out punishments for those that fail to adhere to the provisions.

The construction of health centers by the government to provide free health care services to citizens was a welcome move towards improvement of the health sector and fulfillment of its obligations to the citizenry. It is also desirable and recommendable that these health facilities are well equipped with both medical and human resources in order to serve the people better and only then can we move towards achieving the MDGs.