Reducing Maternal Mortality Rate - Incorporate private caregivers to reach SDG: speakers
To reach the SDG target by 2030, private caregivers should be incorporated in the healthcare system, said speakers at a programme yesterday.
They said despite having no payment and infrastructural facilities, private caregivers are providing antenatal and postnatal care, carrying out vitamin A campaigns, and facilitating family planning and vaccination among other services.
CARE Bangladesh and Community Health Worker Initiative jointly organised the roundtable "Changing perspective of CSBA in Bangladesh through role shifting to community-skilled pregnancy attendant: opportunities and challenges", at Medical Research Council.
"Of the 26 lakh annual births in the country, 53 percent deliveries were conducted at homes, only three percent by skilled people," said Dr Halida Hanum, reproductive health epidemiologist of Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, USA, who conducted the roundtable.
"Besides, most community clinics in the country remain unused. Those could be utilised as infrastructural support for CSBAs," she said.
Community Skilled Birth Attendants (CSBA) are private caregivers working under CARE Bangladesh. Dr Halida said if over 14,000 community clinics are used for maternity support, 120 deliveries can be carried out every year. "But we need a national strategy to raise funds, by engaging local representatives."
CARE Bangladesh initiated a "skilled-health entrepreneurship" model in Sunamganj and Netrakona in 2003, and trained 300 health-service providers, who conducted over 47,000 deliveries in the last six years.
Mentioning the data, icddr,b assistant scientist Bidhan Sarker, in a presentation, said there should be a private-public partnership process to ensure robust services in community clinics 24/7.
Prof Syed Modasser Ali, president of Community Clinic Health Support Trust, said they have some limitations, but they will try to incorporate the trained workforce.
Despite significant and steady progress in the last two decades, Bangladesh's maternal mortality ratio stands at 196 for every lakh. The SDG target is 70 by 2030.
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