ACCORDING to a national daily reports on Friday, over 8,31,000 stillbirths, 5,000 pregnancy-related deaths of women, and 76,000 neonatal deaths occur every year in Bangladesh and with a maternal mortality rate (MMR) of 170 per 1,00,000 live births (as of 2013), Bangladesh still has a long way to go to reach the Sustainable Development Goal for MMR to 70 per 1,00,000 live births by 2030, observed speakers at a roundtable titled ‘Professional Mid-wife led Maternal and Newborn Health Care in Bangladesh’, which was jointly organized by a local Daily and United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
Since pregnancy-centric deaths – prenatal and postnatal are preventable availing the service of professionalized and educated midwives, it is much-needed for all concerned not to lose time in taking effective initiative to prevent the unfortunate deaths of both mothers and kids.
Pregnancy and childbirth-related complications are the major causes of maternal mortality and morbidity in Bangladesh. This complication becomes more intensified while both mothers and kids are to face tragic deaths due to lack of professional and skilled attendants or midwives. A source says if educated midwives are included in health service, it could provide 87 percent of the needed essential care for women and newborns in an enabling environment. Whatever health services the government provides are not well-enough. But it may possibly serve a significant part of health service in rural and urban areas.
There is the actual lack of follow-up and monitoring upon these service providers. A report reveals that the maternal and labour ward is the most neglected ward in Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH), the country’s largest medical facility. Under such circumstances what can we expect in rural community clinics? Besides, the budget for health is currently just one percent of the GDP which is not sufficient at all and without increasing the health budget it would be very difficult to achieve MDGs for MMR (70 MMR per 100000 life birth) which the country wishes to reach by 2030.
In Bangladesh, 3,000 posts for midwives have been created at government facilities to comply with the commitment it made at the 65th General Assembly at the UN and as such already 600 trained and certified midwives have been deployed at Upazila Health Complex and union level sub-centers. This little group of trained midwives are not sufficient to save mothers and kids. The proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel has increased from 5% in 1990 to 31.7% in (BDHS 2011) but still 71% of delivery occurs at home. Those who are still working as midwives are dysfunctional as per estimates.
So, government must give the topmost priority to increase the numbers of midwives, stress the need for follow-up and assessment of the midwife education. And it is also mandatory to build awareness at the community level so that people may avail maternal health services from institutional facilities.
