Focus on better maternal care

Health Watch

NURSING schools have been built in each province to build capacity on maternal care in the country, deputy Health Secretary Dr Paison Dakulala says.
He said during an emergency meeting in 2010, the government and partners decided to make nursing schools a priority to try to reduce maternal deaths. “When I was a young medical graduate, I ended up in Alotau,” Dakulala said.
“I was a physician there. There was a medical superintendent and one of the big challenges was maternal deaths and obstetric complications.”
Dakulala said many women from remote locations came to hospitals.
He set up the tubal ligation programme “to control the population”. In 2009, he said a ministerial task force looked into ways to solve the maternal mortality issue.
It told the government that to reduce maternal deaths, it had to upgrade health facilities, fund the training for midwives, community health workers and doctors, and to ensure skilled staff were available in health centres.
“Previous assessment shows the demonstration between rural outreach, immunisation coverage, and the rural outreach provides an indication of the capacity of the health service to reach service provisions to the rural remote provisions,” Dakulala said.
“There has been a significant decline in conducting rural outreach programmes, in provinces since 2012.”