Tafali, (UW/R), July 13, GNA – Residents of Tafali, a deprived community in the Tuasaa Electoral Area in the Wa East District say a woman is charged Gh¢100.
00 at the health facility when she delivers at home before reaching the facility.
They, however, said it was not the will of any woman to deliver out of the facility, but it was due to lack of a health facility in the Tafali community coupled with the poor state of the road leading to Bulenga where they accessed health care delivery.
Mr Haasmuu Alhassan, a resident, told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in an interview at the community: “When a woman is in labour or someone is seriously sick, we carry the person with a motorbike to the clinic because there is no clinic here.”
Tafali is about five kilometers from the health facility at Bulenga, with the deplorable state of the road compounding the plight of the people’s timely access to health care, which sometimes led to preventable deaths.
He said pregnant women, children, and the aged in the community were the most affected in their ordeal in accessing timely healthcare services.
“Sometimes the pregnant woman will deliver on the way to the facility, but you still have to go to the clinic.
“When a woman doesn’t reach the clinic before she delivers, they charge us Gh¢100.00 because she did not deliver at the facility, but it is also beyond our control,” Mr Alhassan intimated.
The residents, therefore, appealed to the government through the Wa East District Assembly, benevolent individuals, and organisations to come to their aid by providing them with a health facility to ease their struggle in accessing health care services when needed.
However, Goal three of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to which Ghana is a signatory, seeks to “Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages”.
Target 3.1 of the goals required that “By 2030, reduce the global maternal mortality ratio to less than 70 per 100,000 live births”, which would be measured by the proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel.
As part of efforts to help improve the rate of institutional delivery and to reduce maternal and neonatal mortality, some health facilities have resorted to charging monies from any woman who failed to deliver at the facility.
Meanwhile, access to health facilities in some communities was a privilege rather than a right as there existed no health facility in those communities, compelling the deprived people to brace a lot of odds to access healthcare services in some other communities.
It, therefore, behooves the government and her development partners to ensure timely access to primary healthcare services at all levels, particularly in rural communities if she was to achieve this target, including the Universal Health Coverage (UHC).
Source: Ghana News Agency