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CITING a
BusinessMirror exclusive report that the Philippines is
“one of the worst places for mothers,” Sen. Edgardo
Angara has asked Congress to conduct an in-depth inquiry
into cases of maternal and newborn deaths in order to
prevent further increase in the country’s maternal
mortality ratio (MMR).
In a
statement, Angara asserted that the reduction of
maternal mortality is one of the targets of the
Millennium Development Goals of the Millennium
Declaration that the Philippines had signed in 2000.
However, the numbers have not declined since the 1990s.
He noted
that the 1998 National Demographic Health Survey placed
the country’s MMR at about 172 for every 100,000 live
births with a confidence interval of 120 to 224, while
the 2006 Family Planning survey estimates that MMR is
162/100,000 live births with a confidence interval of
128 to 196.
With
such wide confidence intervals inherent in the
difficulties of measuring MMR in the country, he said
the “drop” of 10 points is insignificant.
Angara
said data show that only 25 percent of the causes of
maternal deaths have been identified, and these are
hypertension (13 percent), postpartum hemorrhage (8
percent) and the complications of unsafe abortion (4
percent).
“This
abysmal lack of data reveals a seeming indifference to
and a profound lack of understanding of the problems
that lead to maternal deaths; consequently maternal
deaths constitute a gray area with several unknowns that
could hardly be dealt with through policies and
programs,” Angara added. “Women who survive difficult
pregnancies acquire disabilities that compromise their
well-being. A maternal death, while tragic by itself,
has severe consequences for infants and children; it has
been established that when a mother dies, the prospects
for her children dim.”
He said
studies on child outcomes for mothers who died in labor
report that all the newborn babies died within one year
of birth; children under age 10 are up to 10 times more
likely to die following the death of their mothers than
those whose mothers were alive; the risk of death for
children under 5 is doubled if their mothers die in
childbirth, and at least 20 percent of the burden of
disease among children under the age of 5 is
attributable to conditions directly associated with poor
maternal health and the quality of obstetric and newborn
care.
He added
that the Department of Health, in response to the
problem of maternal mortality, has been implementing
programs since 1995 through the First Women’s Health and
Safe Motherhood Program, funded by grants and loans from
the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, AusAID, European
Commission and Kreditanstalt Fur Wiederaufbau.
Angara
said it has completed this first program in 2002 and
after seven years, results included built and renovated
health facilities; trained traditional birth attendants
and midwives, among others, but there has been no
apparent decline in MMR. However, it failed to evaluate
the first Women’s Health and Safe Motherhood Program in
order to assess lessons that could be learned and to
determine actual expenditures and results of this
project.
Now, he
said, it has started the Second Women’s Health Safe and
Motherhood Program funded by an investment loan of US$16
million from the World Bank in 2005 with counterpart
funding from the Philippine government of US$22 million.
In order
to clearly provide the information as to how mortality
ratio can be decreased, Angara suggested DOH to report
on the First Women’s Health and Safe Motherhood Program
particularly on the actual expenditures and results
achieved; describe the monitoring process of DOH in
tracking the local governments’ implementation,
including expenditures incurred and time spent, of the
Second Women’s Health and Safe Motherhood Program; and
explain the processes of assessing the technical
assistance required and selecting the providers of such
assistance necessary to implement the Second Women’s
Health and Safe Motherhood Program. |
