Making Pregnancy Safer

Making Pregnancy Safer

Making Pregnancy Safer

by Ma Abegail Aguila -
Number of replies: 0

  1. In response to Making Pregnancy Safer, what are the current programs in the country to address maternal mortality and morbidity? Cite at least 1.

         National Safe Motherhood Program

         The main objectives of the program are: 

         (1) Collaborating with Local Government Units in establishing sustainable, cost-effective approach of delivering health services that ensure access of disadvantaged women to acceptable and high quality maternal and newborn health services and enable them to safely give birth in health facilities near their homes

        (2) Establishing a core knowledge base and support systems that facilitate the delivery of quality maternal and newborn health services in the country. 

         These can be achieved through mobilization of the service delivery network of both the public and private providers, thus ensuring the delivery of the integrated maternal-newborn service package. The LGUs are required to build a service delivery team consisting of barangay health workers, nurses, and midwives. Moreover, they also collaborate with other relevant national offices such as: (1) the National Voluntary Blood Program in the establishment of safe blood supply network; (2)  Health Promotion and Communication Service in behavior change interventions; and (3)  PhilHealth accreditation and enrolment in a sustainablefinancing of maternal - newborn services and commodities through locally initiated revenue generation and retention activities

       MNCHN Strategy

       The Department of Health (DOH) issued Administrative Order 2008-0029 “Implementing Health Reforms for Rapid Reduction of Maternal and Neonatal Mortality”. This aims to provide a strategy to rapidly reduce the maternal and neonatal deaths through the provision of a package of maternal, newborn, child health and nutrition (MNCHN) services. The goal of rapidly reducing maternal and neonatal mortality shall be achieved through effective population-wide provision and use of integrated MNCHN services as appropriate to any locality in the country. It primarily aims to achieve the following intermediate results:

.      1. Every pregnancy is wanted, planned and supported

       2. Every pregnancy is adequately managed throughout its course

       3. Every delivery is facility-based and managed by skilled birth attendants/skilled health professionals

       4. Every mother and newborn pair secures proper postpartum and newborn care with smooth transitions to the women’s health care package for the mother and child survival package for the newborn.

  2. What can you suggest in order to decrease our maternal mortality and morbidity in the country? Give at least 3 suggestions.

         Increasing fund allocation for the healthcare sector- Maternal mortality and morbidity is also rooted to the poor quality of healthcare services provided in the country. Due to low allocation of funds, hospitals provide poor and inadequate facilities that cannot cater to every pregnant woman's needs. Increasing the fund allocation for the healthcare sector should also involve the proper training for doctors, nurses, and midwives. According to UNICEF (2020), ensuring adequate numbers of doctors, nurses, midwives and other health workers in the communities where they are needed with the competencies and skills required to save maternal and newborn lives is an urgent priority for every Government, as it will drive forward progress towards a world with universal health coverage, where no mother or newborn dies from a preventable cause.

          Proving proper education- Women should be properly educated about reproductive health services as it could help them towards having an informed choice about pregnancies. Sex education should be implemented for the youth including the proper use of contraceptives in order to prevent teenage and unwanted pregnancies that lead to abortion and maternal deaths from unsafe abortion. Another important factor that pregnant women should understand are the necessary things that they need and the risk factors that they should avoid. Some of these are the necessary nutrients that they need to support the growth of their baby and the unwanted exposures that they need to avoid in order to prevent complications. 

          Improving accessibility of prenatal care by mobilizing local health centers- Prenatal care should be accessible to pregnant women in all parts of the country, especially those in the rural and underserved areas. There should be available health care workers in every local health center that will be able to provide pregnant women with sufficient prenatal care such as free check-ups and provision of free supplements suitable for pregnancy, without the worry of traveling too far and lowering medical costs by reducing expensive emergency department visits and hospital stays.

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