Dr Akwasi Twumasi, Northern Regional Director of Health Services, has advised husbands in the region to pay more attention to the health of their pregnant wives to ensure that maternal deaths are reduced in the region. He said experience in the region had shown that some pregnant women were always left to bleed to death because of the fear of people to send them to health facilities when their husbands were absent due to strict orders some men give to their wives. Dr Akwasi Twumasi said this on Tuesday during an interaction with the media on this year’s ‘Integrated Maternal and Child Health’ campaign. The aim was to interact with media personnel on the challenges of maternal and child health, and to adopt strategies to meet those challenges and how to work to reduce child mortality and improve maternal health. He said women in the region continued to loose their lives during child bearing, citing instances of some 115 pregnant women dying in 2007, while the region recorded 108 in 2006, and 45 as at June this year. He attributed the problem to excessive bleeding, late arrivals at health centres, prolonged labour and infections, which he said needed to be addressed. Dr Twumasi said there is the need for health personnel to collaborate with the media for a vigorous campaign to reduce under-five morbidity and mortality by increasing coverage of known cost-effective interventions. He said the region had procured enough insecticide treated mosquito nets for distribution to the districts for all children less than four years and pregnant women as a means of fighting malaria. He said Wild Polio Virus (WPV) was another concern of health workers in the region and expressed the hope that the region was prepared to address any eventuality in polio adding, “Zero recording of polio does not mean that we should sit down unconcerned.” Dr Twumasi appealed for a stronger collaboration between the media and health personnel in the region so that together they could overcome maternal and infant mortality. Source: GNA