Ghana’s first lady, Rebecca Akuffo Addo, has observed the country’s achievement of the goal three of the Sustainable Development Goals is dependent on adequate resources to end the needless child and maternal mortality.
The goal three underscores the need to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages. It talks about the strides that have been made in increasing life expectancy and reducing some of the common killers associated with child and maternal mortality.
She was speaking at a special fund raising ceremony held at the Manhyia gardens in Kumasi to solicit funds for the construction of a mother and baby unit at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital.
The project, which is under the auspices of the Rebecca Foundation, is dubbed: “Save a child, Save a mother.”
In the 1970s, the then government of Ghana began the construction of a multi-million dollar Mother and Baby Unit (MBU) at the Komfo Anokye Teaching.
The project was to ease congestion at the old MBU and with its state-of-the-art facilities, offer quality healthcare to mothers and babies.
Inadequate funding caused the project, which is now about 35 years old, to stall. In February 2014, the project received public attention after the famous Suweiba missing baby saga but nothing concrete came out of it despite promises by the government to complete the project.
A recent documentary by a journalists on the plight of babies and pregnant women who deliver at the Komfo Anokye Hospital has caused the Rebecca Foundation to take up the matter.
As a first step she has begun appealing to the public to support in cash towards construction of a new Mother and Baby Unit which will ameliorate the problem while plans are made to complete the main project.
The first of such fund raising exercise n was held Accra about a month ago.
Speaking at the second event in Kumasi, Mrs Akufo-Addo said the country will have to do more to improve the state of maternal health in its quest to achieve SDG goal 3, saying “How do we achieve SDGs if this problem exist”.
She said the elevation of the targeted MBU project at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital will even pave the way for more development to be engineered in the health sector, noting “we are not only building a maternity unit for KATH, we intend to improve the health sector of our country”
The programme brought together the business community and other government officials. The Asantehene and his wife, Lady Julia.
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