PESHAWAR: Daily one woman out of every 89 dies due to pregnancy related diseases and about 500 newborns in the country owing to lack of proper maternal and newborn health (MNH) services especially in restive areas of FATA, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
This was revealed in an assessment study conducted by SoSec Consulting Services in collaboration with the Research and Advocacy Fund (RAF) to understand the dynamics and provision of health services in the restive areas, especially for those persons, who have limited or no access to MNH services.
Based on qualitative research, the aims of the study are to capture views and perceptions of both users and providers of health services besides providing evidence based recommendations for improving or designing MNH initiatives/programmes ensuring equitable access in restive areas.
One of the major causes affected provision of MNH services are natural calamities and law and order situation in Fata and some parts of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The number of other factors including social barriers, restricted mobility of women and lack of transport availability, low knowledge of health services, population displacement, damaged health facilities, poverty, high prices of private health services have also affected MNH services contributing to high rate of mortality in the restive areas.
To address existing gaps in MNH programmes, especially for the displaced populations, poor and vulnerable sections of the society, evidence based solutions are required through research to address gaps in access to services.
The NGO has collected information through interviews and focused group discussion in the target areas that will help in understanding supply and demand related issues in accessing MNH services by the poor and disadvantage vulnerable populations and how to improve the current MNH programmes/initiatives ensuring equitable access to people.
To achieve this objective, SoSec recently conducted a training in a local hotel in Islamabad in August last to conduct proper and conducive interviews amongst the target groups i.e. women/mothers, public health managers, private health managers and LHVs/midwives etc. Using specifically developed guidelines for collecting information.
Following successful conduct of training, an inception workshop was organized at a local hotel in Bhurban for orientation of concerned stakeholders on the proposed MNH assessment planned for restive areas of KPK, Balochistan and FATA.
To minimize deaths of women and new born, focus should be made on revival of MNH services and improvement of law and order situation in restive areas of the country to mitigate suffering of ailing people.
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