Dr. Emmanuel Kofi Dzotsi, the Upper East regional health director, has called for interventional research activities to establish the factors responsible for the increasing number of maternal deaths in the region and ways to curb them.
Dr. Dzotsi said though maternal deaths are avoidable, the Upper East region continues to lose mothers in the processes of childbirth.
He said maternal deaths alone contributed to 43 deaths in the Upper East Region in the whole of 2021, adding it was a situation that needed serious digging to find solutions to.
Speaking on the sideline when he joined the Navrongo Health Research Centre for its 2021 performance review meeting on the theme, “Arresting the Covid-19 pandemic: The role of evidence generation”, Dr. Dzotsi urged health research partners to support the health service in the region in finding out the key contributory factors and come out with interventions to curb the unfortunate deaths.
He said although health research has improved in the country over the years, the continuous increasing deaths of mothers during childbirth, was worrisome and called for more efforts from partner researchers to find interventions.
“For the year 2021 as a region, we had major challenges and one of the most important ones is increasing maternal deaths. We are all aware that maternal deaths are avoidable. But unfortunately, we lost 43 of our mothers who were giving life to newborns, but they lost their lives.
So, as we gather here, we will need to find out key factors which are contributing to these maternal deaths. We know some of them, but the key thing that we need to look at is doing interventional research. Our partners should support us in ensuring that we put in interventional research activities to curb these maternal deaths.
We know that our partners can help us because as they are putting in measures to improve our research and still our mothers keep dying, then there is something that we need to relook at so that as we enter the year 2021, we will not be experiencing these maternal deaths again.”. Dr. Dzotsi said.
Dr. Emmanuel Kofi Dzotsi commended the Navrongo Health Research Centre for their research work and huge contribution over the years to health care delivery in Ghana.
Fight against covid-19
In the fight against the deadly coronavirus disease (Covid-19), Dr. Dzotsi said with the support of the center, the region has been able to manage the covid-19 active cases to 3.
He added that “as a research center, we have to recommend you that you have been able to come out with vaccines to be able to reduce or ensure that the severe forms of covid-19 that will lead to deaths are reduced.”
Dr. Dzotsi, however, stated that the major challenge the region still faces when it comes to the fight against the dreaded disease was the under-utilization of the various vaccines despite adequate quantity and availability.
He said the region has been able to fully vaccinate 25% of the population, adding that 59.9 % of the population was still unvaccinated.
He used the opportunity to call for the support of stakeholders to deliberate on some action points that could be instituted to reduce the vaccine hesitance in the region.
Dr. Dzotsi tasked the researchers to undertake research activities to find out the factors responsible for the high level of hesitance.
“The vaccines are there but the people are not taking it. What is contributing to that? So, key researchers, let's find out. If there are community factors that are ensuring we are not able to let community members take the vaccines. Let’s find out ways of reducing the vaccine hesitance.”
Upper East regional health director, Dr. Emmanuel Kofi Dzotsi