One of the Non- Governmental Organizations operating in Malawi, Mama Ye, this week challenged government to go beyond ‘merely talking’ on the promotion of maternal health and safe motherhood in the country. Mama Ye project made these remarks following the end of the project.
Mama Ye Country Director Mathias Chatuluka said that his organization noted that little has been done by government to translate its policy on maternal, child health, and safe motherhood into reality.
Chatuluka made the observation at a dissemination meeting program in Lilongwe aimed at providing highlights of the Mama Ye project, whose main objective was to ensure and enable women deliver in safe healthy facilities.
“Supporting communities to improve maternal and newborn health in their areas is not a one-man show, it calls for joint efforts, hence our urging government to scale-up services to arrest maternal death and ensure safe motherhood in Malawi,” he said.
Chatuluka said his organization conducted civic education in the communities on health rights among other activities citing focusing on civic empowerment and community mobilization to realize a systematic engagement of duty-bearers that guide delivery of social services.
The Director of Reproductive Health in the ministry of health Fannie Kachale, said that facilitating civil society and government working together to ensure commitments on maternal and newborn health are met, is a key to safe motherhood.
She therefore, hailed Mama Ye for the positive strides to help improve the health sector, and also empowering citizens to voice their health concerns when duty-bearers fail to fulfill their mandates.
She advised that mandate-holders should remember that the people crying for services today are the same ones who politicians will hunt for like wild game in search of their votes in the 2019 tripartite elections.
Kachale noted that the recent demographic health survey for 2015 on maternal health findings, show that there is improvements on indicators for maternal and newborns health.
For instance, she said newborn deaths in 2010 were at 31% as opposed to now 21% though Malawi failed to meet Millennium Development Goals.