Ways To Enhance Maternal Health In Tanzania?

The Maternal and Reproductive Health in Tanzania Program aims to make maternity care more accessible and improve the quality of care to better treat or prevent life-threatening pregnancy complications. UNICEF provides focused support to four regions with the lowest maternal and child health indicators, including Mbeya, Songwe, Iringa, and Njombe, as well as Zanzibar. In Tanzania, progress has been made in reducing under-five mortality rates from 130 in 2000 to 54 per 1,000 live births in 2017.

The program focuses on ensuring all women have access to voluntary family planning to avoid unintended pregnancy and promoting antenatal care to prevent complications. USAID’s maternal and child health (MCH) programs in Tanzania support activities in line with the Ending Preventable Child and Maternal Mortality Initiative, which prioritizes the provision of quality maternal healthcare throughout pregnancy, delivery, and the postpartum period.

The 13-year Program to Reduce Maternal Deaths in Tanzania employed multifaceted maternal, newborn, and reproductive health interventions, including training of health workers, provision of lifesaving resources, and community outreach and health education for women in rural settings. By building operating rooms and training more healthcare workers, the Maternal Health program in Tanzania has expanded coverage of maternal care.

This project will build on previous work in maternal health in Tanzania and aim to improve access to basic sexual reproductive health care for moms and babies. A major factor behind high levels of maternal mortality in Tanzania is the insufficient utilization of reproductive healthcare services.

Which country has the best maternal health?

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an increase in maternal mortality in four out of nine countries: Japan, Australia, the Netherlands, and the U. S. The U. S. had a maternal mortality rate of 22. 3 per 100, 000, over 50 times higher than the next closest country. Black women in the U. S. had a maternal mortality rate more than double the country’s overall rate in 2022. Differences in health insurance, midwife use, and parental leave may contribute to the gap between the U. S. and other countries in maternal death. Limited healthcare coverage and a shortage of maternal health professionals are factors contributing to this trend.

What is the safe motherhood initiative in Tanzania?

The concept of safe motherhood encompasses all aspects that ensure the safety of women during pregnancy and childbirth. Certain demographic groups, such as girls under the age of 15 or women in their mid- to late-forties, are at an elevated risk and require particular attention.

How to improve maternity care?

The Safe Learning Environment Charter, Labour Ward Coordinator education and development framework, and Perinatal Pelvic Health Services are being reviewed and updated to reflect the current work of the maternity and neonatal programme. The Better Births report, published in February 2016, aims for maternity services across England to become safer, more personalized, kinder, professional, and family-friendly. It calls for access to information for women to make decisions about their care, and support centered on individual needs and circumstances.

Staff should be supported to deliver women-centered care, working in high-performing teams, well-led organizations, and cultures that promote innovation and continuous learning. Implementing the Better Births vision will support the Secretary of State’s ambition to halve the number of stillbirths, neonatal and maternal deaths, and brain injuries by 2030.

How can we improve maternal mortality in Africa?

The Nigeria State Department (MSD) is supporting programs in Africa to improve access to maternity care and sexual and reproductive health, focusing on innovation and digital solutions. The programs aim to empower women through increased health literacy and bridge system gaps like shortages in qualified healthcare professionals and limited access to quality medicines. MSD collaborates with non-governmental organizations, healthcare professionals, businesses, and local and national governments to ensure the needs of women are understood and met. The reports demonstrate MSD’s dedication to advancing progress towards the United Nations’s Sustainable Development Goal on maternal mortality reduction.

What is the goal 5 improve maternal health?

Millennium Development Goal 5 (MDG 5) aims to improve maternal health by achieving two primary targets: 5A and 5B. Target 5A aims to reduce the global maternal mortality ratio by 75 percent, while Target 5B aims to achieve universal access to reproductive health. This is supported by research from the UNDP/UNFPA/UNICEF/WHO/World Bank Special Programme of Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction (HRP), the Department of Reproductive Health and Research at the World Health Organization, the Department of Paediatrics at Ribeirão Preto Medical School, GLIDE Technical Cooperation and Research, and the Department of Social Medicine at Ribeirão Preto Medical School.

What is a key strategy to reduce maternal mortality?

This report identifies clinical strategies for childbirth and its complications, emphasizing the importance of skilled birth attendants who can apply these strategies when needed. A skilled attendant is crucial in providing safe and hygienic care during childbirth, while providing good-quality obstetric care for complicated deliveries. While most complications cannot be predicted, having a skilled attendant at the delivery is generally the only safe way to provide life-saving clinical strategies.

Providing broad access to basic or comprehensive essential obstetric care is more realistic in urban areas, but the birth attendant must first recognize a complication and arrange an effective referral. The committee views the association of skilled care with reduced mortality at childbirth and the need for a skilled birth attendant as sufficient grounds for recommending that a skilled attendant assist at every birth.

Traditional birth attendants (TBAs) are often guided by traditional practices rather than medical experience, and they do not carry a regular caseload, which limits their ability to build the experience of a nurse or midwife. Managing normal deliveries, recognizing complications, and managing and referring patients with complications requires more knowledge, training, and oversight, as well as the ongoing experience gained from a regular caseload.

While TBAs can provide comfort for mothers and families during labor and delivery, they should not be seen as a substitute for a skilled birth attendant.

What are the priorities of Tanzania?

The five priority areas, as identified by the government, are infrastructure, agriculture, industry, human capital development, and economic services (trade, tourism, and financial services). In addition, the government has set as its objective the improvement of basic social services, enhancement of the skills profile, and improvement of the business environment.

What is the maternal health situation in Tanzania?

The Maternal and Reproductive Health in Tanzania Program, which operated from 2006 to 2019, aimed to increase maternity care accessibility and improve the quality of care to better treat or prevent life-threatening pregnancy complications. The program’s impact was documented through monitoring and evaluation activities by the CDC’s Division of Reproductive Health. The maternal mortality ratio in facilities declined from 303 deaths per 100, 000 live births in 2013 to 174 in 2018, a decline of 43. The program’s success was attributed to its efforts in reducing maternal mortality and improving access to maternity care.

What are the priority components of reproductive health in Tanzania?

UNFPA Tanzania is working to ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights in Tanzania. The organization prioritizes maternal and newborn health, voluntary family planning, prevention of sexually transmitted infections and HIV, and providing accessible information and services for adolescents and youth. It also works to strengthen health systems to reduce preventable maternal and child mortality by improving access to voluntary family planning, quality maternal and child health services, and rapid access to emergency obstetric and newborn care.

UNFPA is also committed to supplying reproductive health commodities and life-saving medicines to increase access to family planning and other reproductive health services. The UNFPA Supplies programme increases the availability of reproductive health supplies, including voluntary family planning and life-saving maternal health medicines, and supports the coordination of a comprehensive national condom program.

What are the ways to improve maternal health?

Maternal and infant health can be improved by increasing access to care, changing the culture of medicine, modifying social determinants of health, boosting breastfeeding support, addressing specific complications, providing transport to specialty care, and increasing insurance coverage. Obstetricians and gynecologists have the unique privilege of overseeing women’s health, but several factors continue to impact their well-being.

Maternal morbidity and mortality in the United States remain higher than in other high-income countries, particularly for minority women and those with low socioeconomic status. About 700 women die of pregnancy-related complications annually, with 70 severe unexpected outcomes for each death.

What measures are taking to minimize maternal death in Tanzania?

This review examines the maternal mortality situation in Tanzania over the past 50 years, focusing on efforts, challenges, and opportunities to reduce it. The maternal mortality ratio in Tanzania has been decreasing from 453 to 200 per 100, 000 live births between 1961 and 1990, but has since increased to 578 per 100, 000 live births. Despite high coverage of pregnant women attending at least one antenatal clinic, only half have access to skilled delivery.

Efforts to reduce maternal mortality include reproductive and child survival initiatives, increased skilled delivery, maternal death audits, coordination and integration of various programs, family planning, malaria interventions, and expanded immunization and adolescent health and nutrition programs. However, inadequate access to maternal health care services remains a challenge.

Recommended strategies for reducing maternal deaths include strengthening the health system to provide skilled attendance during childbirth, upgrading rural health centers to provide emergency obstetric services, providing adolescent and male-friendly family planning services, strengthening public-private partnerships, supporting operational research, and strengthening community participation and women empowerment.

In conclusion, the maternal mortality ratio in Tanzania is unacceptably high and far from reaching the millennium development goals. Maternal health care services should focus on ensuring a continuum of care through strengthening the health system, providing good quality healthcare in a well-organized referral health system, and conducting operation research to support program implementation.