Dr Henrietta Odoi-Agyarko, Deputy Director of Public Health, Ghana Health Service, on Monday called for a multi-disciplinary as well as multi-dimensional approach to curb the high maternal mortality and child morbidity rates in Africa.
Dr Odoi-Agyarko in an address at the opening of a five-day capacity building workshop on the prevention and control of malaria in pregnancy, said until recently malaria in pregnancy was a relatively neglected issue, yet it had a devastating toll on the lives of mothers on the Continent.
The workshop, which is being attended by participants from Nigeria, The Gambia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cameroon, Uganda and Ghana, would help to among other things strengthen the capacity of participants on malaria in pregnancy and Mother-to-Child-Transmission (MTCT) of HIV/AIDS prevention and control.
Dr Odoi-Agyarko noted that Africa still bore the highest burden of malaria worldwide, which was about 90 per cent and accounted for between 10 per cent and 15 per cent of maternal deaths in malaria endemic areas.
"Out of the about 30 million pregnancies that occur among women in malaria areas in Africa each year, less than five per cent of these women had access to effective interventions," she said.
She said for those women malaria was a threat to both themselves and to their babies with up to 200,000 infant deaths each year.
She explained that in terms of its effect on mothers, malaria caused severe anaemia, which increased the risk for maternal mortality, adding that malarial anaemia had been estimated to cause as many as 10,000 maternal deaths each year in Africa.
Dr Odoi-Agyarko said despite the worrying statistics, the health sector continued to face numerous challenges including limited infrastructure and human resource capacity to effectively combat the problem.
She mentioned interventions such as the use of insecticide treated bed nets, case management of malaria and use of Intermittent Preventive Treatment as effective measures that had reduced the rate of infection in malaria endemic areas and improved the health of mothers and their newborns.
She said some challenges of implementing effective programmes included limited logistics for increased awareness programmes on malaria in pregnancy and HIV/AIDS among communities and also integrating malaria and HIV/AIDS control tools with other health programmes targeted to pregnant women and newborns.
The others were strengthening antenatal care systems and involving of Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs) where they were part of health service delivery as well as putting in more financial resources in preventive and control programmes.
Dr Odoi-Agyarko said the most effective strategy in combating the problem would require ensuring greater coordination and collaboration of all the various programme and stakeholders to ensure maximum impact.
Dr Joaquin Saweka, WHO Country Representative, stressed the importance of developing and strengthening a national capacity for the prevention and control of malaria during pregnancy as high priority for Africa.
He said for many women in the Sub-Saharan Africa, pregnancy and child bearing continued to be risky due to the numerous challenges including malaria and access to basic minimum health care.
He also called for strategies aimed at improving pregnancy outcomes for women in Africa.
Dr Saweka noted that pregnancy and childbirth though were natural processes that women the world over went through, but for many in developing countries the numerous challenges continued to make the process very risky.
"For 30 million pregnant women in Sub-Saharan Africa, pregnancy and childbearing are particularly risky," he said.
He mentioned malaria, HIV/AIDS, malnutrition, very low contraceptive prevalence rates leading to unwanted pregnancies, ignorance and poverty as some of the problems, which contributed to high maternal mortality and child morbidity rates in Africa.
Dr Saweka also explained that malaria in pregnancy was associated with maternal anaemia, increasing the risk of maternal death and growth retardation in infants.
He mentioned weak national human resource development and management including the continuing brain drain, lack of access to health care with the availability and use of quality skilled care during pregnancy, childbirth and immediate postnatal care.
Dr Saweka called for closer collaboration between national malaria control programmes and reproductive health programmes as well as the strengthening of monitoring and evaluation to ensure that the desired results were attained.