Mchinji district commissioner Richard Hara has called for advocacy and implementation of safe motherhood initiatives at community level to help reduce maternal and infant mortality in the district.
Hara said this on Monday at Fanuel in Traditional Authority Mkanda in the district during an open day organised by MaiMwana, a project aimed at improving maternal and child health.
He said the interventions, which the MaiMwana project is implementing such as forming women’s community groups, using volunteer peer counsellors, and instigating routine community maternal death reviews in the district, have proved to be cost effective methods for reducing deaths of infants and mothers.
Said Hara: “Supporting women to recognise danger signs during pregnancy and child birth, enabling communities to lobby their health centres for better maternity care, engaging mothers on best practices such as exclusive breast feeding and empowering communities to make decisions to improve their maternal and newborn care, saves lives.”
On her part, MaiMwana project manager Tambosi Phiri said the project scaled up male involvement in the prevention of mother- to-child transmission of HIV (PMCT) programme to ensure that men encourage their wives to seek health services.
She said PMCT, promoted through male championship, had proved to be a cost effective and efficient method of solving problems associated with antenatal and post natal health. n
