Health indicators in Volta Region decline

Anaemia continues to be the leading cause of death in the Volta Region, Dr. Joseph Teye Nuertey, Volta Regional Director of Health Services said on Tuesday.

He said the disease was the primary cause of hospital admissions in 2016 and killed 237 persons in the year 2015.

Dr Nuertey at the 2016 Annual Review Meeting of the Regional Health Directorate in Ho on the theme “Improving maternal and child health outcomes through effective supportive supervision; the role of Leadership,” said for 2016, the disease constituted an alarming 13.8 per cent of all hospital admissions and blamed it on unavailability of blood in blood banks across hospitals in the Region.

He expressed worry about the poor performance of the Service over the period and said OPD attendance by clients of the National Health Insurance Scheme also declined from 88.5 per cent in 2014 to 87.3 per cent in 2015 and fell further to 85.0 per cent in 2016.

Dr. Nuertey said it was unfortunate that despite efforts at improving the number of midwives, supervised child delivery and Ante Natal Care (ANC) still remained very low at 43 and 68.7 per cent respectively.

He said multi-drug resistant tuberculosis was also becoming a threat to good health in the Region with six new cases recorded in 2016, making a total of eight cases now on treatment.

Dr Nuertey said though the Region witnessed some drop in teenage pregnancies from 2015’s 15.3 per cent to 2016’s 15.1 per cent, the drop was negligible but appeared consoled by the continuous drop in malaria cases as a percentage of OPD attendance from 27.9 per cent in 2014 to 24 per cent in 2015 and further to 23.8 per cent in 2016.

He praised the 84.96 per cent leap in home visits by Community Health Officers at the Community-based Health Planning Services level, which he said increased in 2015 from 51,776 to 98,358 in 2016 and attributed it to the financial support the Health Service received from developmental partners and associated programmes.

Source: GNA