Home births to be discouraged

National

By OGIA MIAMEL
THE Government must upgrade rural health facilities if its plan to ban home births by women is to work, Dr Glen Mola says.
The Government wants to make it compulsory for all women to give birth in proper health facilities only to reduce the rate of maternal deaths.
Mola is the head of Reproductive Health, Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Papua New Guinea School of Medicine and Health Sciences.
“The problem is that many women do not have access to health facilities (no road, no transport, no money). Or the facilities themselves, like the smaller rural health centres are not in a good state, with lack of running water, power, medical supplies and trained health personnel to deal with pregnancy complications,” he said.
Mola said the Government, in 2009, had set up a ministerial task force to advise on ways to solve the problem. But it never funded the upgrading of health facilities, training of midwives, community health workers and doctors, he said.
He said currently, 60 per cent of the 260,000 women who gave birth each year had to deliver their babies at home. And about one per cent died from pregnancy complication because they were not able to reach a health facility.