Friday, 14th November, 2025
Hon Korkor Laurette Asante
Atiwa West
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
I rise today on Order 93 of our Standing Orders with a deep sense of urgency to address an alarming phenomenon. Many young Ghanaian women are losing their lives during or shortly after childbirth. According to the Ghana Statistical Service’s 2024 Thematic Brief on Maternal Mortality, the second and most recent Maternal Health Survey conducted in 2017 estimates that Ghana’s maternal mortality ratio at 310 deaths per 100,000 live births for the seven years preceding the survey. This figure is corroborated by the World Health Organization (WHO) in its 2025 Trends in Maternal Mortality Estimates 2000 to 2023 report.
Ghana’s rate remains significantly higher than the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals target of 70 per 100,000 live births by 2030. So, Ghana is 310 deaths per 100,000 live births and the UN SDG goal is 70 per 100,000 live births by 2030. A recent three-year study from the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital from January, 2021 to December, 2023, which was published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, the global report in March, 2025 of this year, reveals a shocking maternal mortality ratio of 801 per 100,000 live births over a three-year period at the Korle-Bu facility.
Mr Speaker, 801; that is unacceptable. Hypertensive disorders accounted for 40.7 per cent, while haemorrhage caused 28.4 per cent of audited maternal deaths. So, the non-audited, Lord knows. This was among girls aged 15 to 19. The maternal mortality due to hypertensive complications were as high as 529 per 100,000 in the same research report. These are not just statistics; they are lives lost to systematic failures in maternal health care.
Mr Speaker, the leading causes of these maternal deaths are postpartum haemorrhage, eclampsia, sepsis, obstructed labour, and complications from caesarean sections. These causes are well known and treatable, yet 81 per cent of pregnancy-related deaths occur at home or within 24 hours of admission by the three-year research study. This reflects the enduring impact of the “three delays”: one is deciding to seek care, and in reaching the medical facility, delays in receiving timely treatment, and delays in treatment upon arrival. These dangers are magnified by long travel distances, broken referral systems, and overstretched facilities.
Mr Speaker, an article published by the Lancet Global Health on March 7, 2025, and reported by the World Health Organization identifies haemorrhage, which is severe bleeding, and hypertensive disorders such as preeclampsia as the leading causes of maternal death globally. According to the report, these conditions accounted for approximately 50,000 to 80,000 maternal fatalities, respectively, in the year 2020. This alarming data stems from a multi-systematic review conducted to examine the root causes of maternal deaths occurring between 2009 and 2020.
Mr Speaker, these findings underscore the urgent need to strengthen maternal health systems, particularly emergency obstetric care, to prevent avoidable deaths and safeguard the lives of mothers in Ghana and the world. Substandard care and failures such as misdiagnosis, delayed emergency interventions, and poor resuscitation practises further compound the risk of maternal mortality.
Mr Speaker, globally, countries with robust maternal health systems report far fewer maternal deaths. Germany, for example, had a maternal mortality ratio of just four per 100,000 live births in 2023, according to the World Bank’s gender data portal. Ghana, per the KorleBu report that I just cited, was 801 per 100,000 live births. Germany had just four. Malaysia and Sri Lanka have achieved dramatic declines in maternal mortality by expanding communitybased midwifery programmes and investing in emergency transport and referral networks, as described in the World Bank’s Investing in Maternal Health report and the Sub-Saharan African Transport Policy Programme (SSATP) analysis published in April 2025.
Mr Speaker, our healthcare professionals continue to work heroically under immense pressure, but their efforts are undermined by poor infrastructure, lack of essential medicines, and a fragile referral system. No woman should lose her life while giving birth. Every maternal death is not just a tragedy, it is a failure of our health system, our governance, and our collective responsibility.
Mr Speaker, this is not an issue for women alone; it is a national development crisis. Beyond the human cost, the economic and social impact is severe. The loss of mothers leads to broken families, reduced workforce participation, and long-term poverty, especially in rural areas.
Mr Speaker, we must act decisively to reduce maternal mortality in Ghana. As such, we must adopt a comprehensive and coordinated approach that addresses both the systemic gaps and the human realities of maternal care.
To that end, Mr Speaker, we should scale up midwifery training and deployment to meet WHO’s ratio of 1 to 175 provider-to-population ratio. We must also equip district hospitals with essential medical equipment, blood banks, Intensive Care Units (ICU) facilities, and essential medicines. We need to strengthen the referral system specifically for obstetric emergencies. It is essential that we institute mandatory in-hospital or clinic maternal death audits and enforce clinical protocols for emergency obstetric care.
Mr Speaker, respectfully, this House must act with urgency and resolve. Let this honourable House commit, not in words alone, but through concrete action to addressing the high incidence of maternal mortality in Ghana. There must be an enquiry as to the causes of the high rate of maternal death during childbirth or immediately after childbirth in Ghana. Is it due to complications during natural or caesarean sections? Or is it due to lack of antenatal care? Is it due to medical negligence? We must investigate the causes so that they can be addressed and prevent further deaths of mothers-to-be.
Mr Speaker, let us ensure that no female in Ghana dies giving life, which death could have been prevented. Let us build a nation where motherhood is celebrated, not mourned, where giving birth in Ghana is safe and not to be feared. Mr Speaker, I was speaking to some young women in my constituency, and what they said was very depressing and sad. They said they are pregnant, in their eighth to ninth month, and their fear was giving birth.
Mr Speaker, we are in 2025, and the fear of these women is giving birth. How could that be? We must address this so that we prevent these preventable deaths, because they are preventable. The data shows that a large number of these maternal deaths are preventable. We may have some that may not be preventable, but if we look at the data, it says that a large number of the maternal deaths are preventable, because the causes are known and there is treatment available.
Mr Speaker, I thank you very much for the opportunity.
Hon Grace Ayensu-Danquah
Essikadu-Ketan
Thank you, Mr Speaker, for allowing me to contribute to this Statement by the Hon Member for Atiwa West.
First, I would like to commend her for bringing this issue to the floor of the House today. Ghana’s maternal mortality rate is a pressing concern. As she has already alluded to, the current mortality rate is 310 deaths per 100,000 live births. The World Health Organization (WHO) standard is 70 deaths per 100,000 live births. So, we are way above that.
To make this number even more frightening is the half-year report. In 2023, half-year, we had 430 deaths. So, we had 430 women walk into hospitals or clinics pregnant, and 430 of them died. In 2024, we had 437deaths for the half-year report. The whole year in 2024 was 819 women walked in healthy and ended up dead. In 2025, between January and June 2025, we are already up to 504.
Mr Speaker, the leading cause of these unfortunate deaths are hypertensive complications, gestational diabetes, and more importantly, postpartum haemorrhage. Basically, what happens is that after they give birth, the uterus does not contract, and then they bleed to death. These deaths are usually around the perioperative period or the postpartum period, that is, the first few days of delivery. The region in Ghana with the highest maternal mortality is Ashanti. Ashanti has recorded the highest maternal mortality rate.
Mr Speaker, what are some of the solutions? Obviously, we have to talk about solutions. In terms of postpartum haemorrhage, there is a medication that is called Carbetocin. Basically, when the woman takes this Carbetocin after the delivery, it contracts the uterus and then it stops the uterus from bleeding. Currently, the Carbetocin we have in the country is a non-heat-stable version, and that version requires the cold chain. So, it makes the medicine very expensive. It is about GH₵500.00 per dose. But there is another version, which is a heat-stable version, that does not require the cold chain, and it is about GH₵9.00 per pill. So, we are currently working on making the GH₵9.00 heatstable Carbetocin available to women in Ghana, because the number one cause of maternal mortality is postpartum haemorrhage. So, once this medicine is here, the haemorrhage or the people who are dying from postpartum haemorrhage would be decreased.
Mr Speaker, the next issue is that most of them are having these complications from being hypertensive, either pre-eclampsia or post-eclampsia, or hypertensive during the pregnancy. That is what is leading to a lot of these complications. With the Ghana Medical Trust Fund, as well as the free primary healthcare, what the Government is trying to do is to identify the high-risk women in the community before they even come to the Community-based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) compound to deliver.
So, if the community health nurse is able to identify that a pregnant woman in the community is a potential high-risk because they have high blood pressure or they have diabetes, what we do is that we can escalate their delivery to the next level, which is basically a district hospital, so they do not end up in a CHPS compound having a baby and being complicated.
Mr Speaker, the next issue is about training. We are currently transitioning the nursing training programmes from diploma programme to degree programme. So, hopefully, as part of the training, we are going to end up with highly skilled specialised nurses who would be in the communities trying to avoid this high level of postpartum maternal mortality.
Mr Speaker, the next issue is about hypertension again. With the free primary healthcare, we would identify the patients that are hypertensive within the community. Hypertension medicine is affordable, so that if we can treat the hypertension in the communities or at the lowest level of our health system, which is the CHPS compound or the health centres, then we can avoid those who end up pregnant and those who end up with pregnancy and complications and end up in the hospital with high mortality rates.
Mr Speaker, when we look at Ashanti Region, as I said, it is the number one region with the highest morbidity and mortality. We are putting together documentation for mentorship for the specialist doctors and nurses so that the numbers in Ashanti Region would be decreased. Once this document is done and we have done the mentorship in Ashanti Region, we would quickly scale it up to the rest of the country. The next region is Central Region. So, if the Ashanti Region and the Central Region record low numbers, this would really help us—
Lastly, Mr Speaker, we are putting together the Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child, Adolescent Health and Nutrition (RMNCAHN) Strategic Plan for 2026 and 2030 —
Hon Abdul-Khaliq Mohammed Sherif
Nanton
Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.
I would want to associate myself and then say a very big thank you to the Member of Parliament for bringing this critical issue up. If we look at the issue of maternal mortality, it is just an indication of the poor nature of our health system.
If we take the United States of America (USA), for example, we have a maternal mortality ratio of just about 18 per 100,000 live births. If we take Ghana, we have about 300 per 100,000 live births. This means that if we have a 60-seater Yutong bus and all of them crash at the same time, we are going to have everybody in that bus dead. That is what it means, that per every 100,000 live births, 300 of our women would die in their bid to give birth to children.
Now, what are the key issues? If we look at maternal mortality and we do not divide it into very three critical issues, we would not appreciate the issue. The first thing is the decision to seek healthcare, and that is patient-centred. The patient first has to take a decision that she is not well and needs to get to the hospital. But let us also remember, that the decision also depends on who the person is living with. It depends on religious beliefs, traditional beliefs, et cetera. After this decision to seek healthcare is taken, the next decision is, she would have to get to the hospital. Where is the nearest hospital? What is the road network looking like?
If one comes to my Constituency, Nantong, for example, it will take a pregnant woman sometimes about two to three hours. She knows she has to get to the hospital, but she needs an extra three hours to get to the nearest district hospital, which is not going to be in Nantong, but Savelugu. So first, she had a problem of decision making. Now she has decided that she will seek health care but the road network, is a problem. But what do we have control over? That is the third category, it is at the level of the institution, our hospitals. What is our emergency preparedness for women that are pregnant?
Prof Grace AyensuDanquah just mentioned a very essential drug that we need, oxytocin. How available is it? Oxytocin actually should be kept at a temperature between -2 to - 8 o . Do we have refrigerators in our hospitals to even ensure the efficacy of the oxytocin that we are giving to these pregnant women? Because Mr Speaker, sometimes, we have the medicine, but we are not storing them at the right temperatures. So, we may be administering oxytocin, but the uterus is not going to contract.
Lastly, Mr Speaker, is the issue of human resource. What is the distribution of health care workers in this country? Most of our health care workers, our specialists, are concentrated in either Accra, in Kumasi, or in Cape Coast. What happens to that pregnant patient who has found herself in the Savannah Region, who needs a specialist obstetrician, gynaecologist, to look at the complications that Prof AyensuDanquah was talking about?
That is why I am happy that the Ministry of Health has agreed to look at our human resource system. Must we keep all our doctors, our specialists in Korle Bu Teaching Hospital? Must we keep all our specialists in Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital? We would need to decentralise this. Yes, there has been task shifting where some level of what we call community health nurses have been trained to do some level of midwifery care, but is that what we want as a country? Those of us in this Chamber are all part of the problem. I am part of the problem. We are all part of the problem.
For example, if I have a doctor who is my Constituent and is posted to the Northern Region, and he comes to me that Hon, I have been sent to the Northern Region but I do not want to go there, my next action would be to look for a way to get this doctor not to go to the Northern Region but what I have done by helping him not go to the Northern Region is that I am contributing to that maternal mortality ratio we are talking about.
Mr Speaker, it is time, as a country, we decide which road we want to go. There has been a lot of investment in health. At least, the uncapping of the National Health Insurance Fund has made money accessible and readily available to health facilities to acquire essential medicine, and equipment. The coming of the Primary Health System will also bring health to the doorstep of the people. The CHPS compound we are running was supposed to be the very first point for our health care system. But it is our CHPS concept where we live up to—
With these few words, Mr Speaker, I am grateful for the opportunity.
Hon Millicent Yeboah Amankwah
Sunyani West
Thank you, Mr Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to comment on this important Statement by my Colleague on the other Side.
Mr Speaker, this issue is very critical and I will personally be an advocate because I have experienced this. If it was not by God’s grace, I would not be alive by now. Before I go to my personal experience, I will talk about the roads. The roads in some of our rural areas are so bad that it is difficult for constituents to get to the hospital on time, and I believe we need to give it much attention.
Mr Speaker, during my daughter’s birth, it got to a point that I had just enough energy to see whatever the midwife was doing. Then I heard her mention, “Jesus” and I asked myself, what exactly was happening. My baby girl kept crying. I had lost my mom about 12 years ago so one of my aunties came to help me bath my little girl after I was discharged.
Mr Speaker, we know our old mothers, they would want to check all the parts of a baby, like the hands, the legs, to see if the child was really healthy. So, she told me it looked like something was not right with a part of the baby’s body. I got scared and decided to take the baby back to the hospital, because I remembered when I was taking her out of the hospital, the doctors had grouped and were having a discussion about my baby. So, I kept asking myself, what was happening? When I got to the hospital, the midwife was done with her shift and had left, and there was a new midwife on duty. But she said she did not understand what was happening.
So, I asked whether we could take the folder and find out what transpired during the delivery, but when we took the folder, there were no records. Then I asked if we could call the general doctor, because I saw him there while they were having the discussion. When he came, he said, it was a normal thing that has happened.
During delivery, the baby got stuck at the shoulder and while she was being pulled out, her shoulder got overstretched. So, she had some pain in the shoulder, and could not move the hand, so they decided to put her hand in a sling for a week, and later take her for physiotherapy.
Mr Speaker, I am saying this as a concerned mother, because when I took her for physiotherapy, a large number of kids were undergoing therapy. I engaged some of the mothers, and they said, because of these things that happened during birth, some people feel that their children are disabled, so even their husbands are not appreciative and welcoming of the child.
Mr Speaker, one can imagine the trauma. So Mr Speaker, there are some kids on the streets who form part of the disabled community, meanwhile, it is sometimes the negligence of some medical practitioners and these are matters we need to pay key attention to and be careful about because it is a matter of life and death. When we investigate and notice that these are negligence of medical practitioners, what do we do about it? Not everyone has money to take up a legal stance. Even at the physiotherapy, some of the nurses were not even concentrating during the physiotherapy. So, I had to speak to the Director to bring the baby home to continue with the exercise.
By God’s grace, she fully recovered. But I imagine what other kids who were unable to get the attention, opportunity, and care because their mothers would have to take a car to the Komfo Anokye physiotherapy—I was not surprised when the Deputy Minister for Health made reference to the high mortality rate in the Ashanti Region.
So, Mr Speaker, by concluding, I think this is a very important Statement made by my Colleague, and we really need to pay key attention in solving it. Thank you for the opportunity given to me.
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