By Julius Mugaga Tukacungurwa, Umoja Standard.
Mukono, Uganda:
Important to Note;
Statistics has it that, on a daily 12 women die due to childbirth related complications in Uganda which translates to a maternal mortality ratio of 169 per 100,000 live births which is worrisome, there are various reasons that favilitate these statistics.
Then, about 287,000 mothers and four million children die annually due to preventable pregnancy and child birth complications, almost 95% of these deaths occur in developing countries.
On a daily, close to 800 women die in developing world that translates to nearly one maternal death every two minutes.
Painfully, most of these deaths are preventable because in developing countries, some mothers just lack information on pregnancy and child birth, transport to health facilities, limited equipment and trained personnel at health facilities, absence of basic medication to prevent bleeding in mothers after delivery, a complication that leads to most maternal deaths.
With this in light, Journalism stand out as a very important tool in exposing issues that lead to this menace.
During the Save the mothers workshop at Uganda Christian University, Mukono that aimed to equip journalists with more skills in maternal related reporting, Dr. Mushin Nsubuga, the Executive Director of Save the Mothers Organization observed that journalists are key partners in the Campaign to save mothers.
He stressed that using their platforms (media channels) they can deliver basic information to save a mother citing that, they can tell a mother that ‘bleeding while you’re pregnant can lead to death, once you see this, immediately go to the health facility.’
He added that journalists can flashlights on critical issues like the poor roads which can lead women to delay to access health facilities, there by awakening policy makers and bringing readers attention to it.
“Journalists can go down in the health facilities and understand what is the staffing supposed to do in health facilities. Do you have blood?, how much blood are you supposed to have in such a health facility? What are the shortages in blood? How can we solve these shortages?,” He stated.
“We are calling upon you to come and join this battle of reducing maternal mortality in Uganda.” He appealed to Journalists.
He however noted that, the can only do this as Journalists if they are equipped with the safe motherhood information and can only do this by making sure that they study these things, for example through the masters of public health leadership.
He went to note that there are three major reasons behind maternal deaths, One being limited information and being less economically empowered, poor road network, then limited services services at health facilities.
Save the mother organization envisions to see that no mother or her child die from preventable causes, they believe that universal access to safe maternal care .
They decided to partner with Uganda Journalists Association as one of the way the information to save Ugandan mothers will spreading adequately.