Three women die every hour from childbirth complications

In Pakistan, three women die every hour from childbirth and pregnancy related complications. Every one minute, a woman dies due to obstetric world-wide. Over 600,000 die in one year, 99 percent of these are in developing countries.
This was stated by Dr Abdul Majeed Rajput, Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) Executive Director, while addressing the participants of the concluding session of a two-week 4th Inter-country Training Programme on Safe Motherhood (ICTP) at the Mother and Child Health Centre (MCHC) here on Saturday. The training was organised by Ministry of Health in collaboration with Japan International Co-operation Agency (Jica).
Takao Kiabara, Jica Resident Representative and Dr Ghazala Mehmood, Programme Manager, were also present on the occasion. Five teams of health personnel selected from districts of three provinces and the federal capital were trained for the creation of 'safe motherhood districts' in each province and the capital.
Sharing the background of the programme, the speakers informed the participants that it was initiated by Jica in 2004 and till 2006, it has trained 75 persons. It was launched with the objective of developing 25 safe motherhood districts' through imparting training to 25 teams of health professionals in the target districts.
Dr Rajput said that 130 training programmes were conducted in 2007 alone, and that processes are in progress to conduct multi-country training programmes. He announced that in 2009 a workshop of same nature will be organised.
"We appreciate the efforts of Jica and the participants who made this training a success. We are hopeful that through this training we would be able to reduce the maternal and child mortality, pregnancy-related complications and disabilities rate in Pakistan", he said.
While talking to Business Recorder the officials of PIMS told that in the opening session of the course, Caretaker Federal Minister for Health Ejaz Rahem had stressed upon the need to revise the PC-1 of the Inter Country Training Programme on Safe Motherhood, to allow a boost in the frequency of training and reservation of seats for participants from other countries in the region like India, Nepal, Afghanistan and so on.
It was insisted that every province including Fata should be involved in the training. Jica is helping Pakistan a lot in tackling and strengthening its health issues mainly the TB Control Programme, the polio eradication initiative and escalating the health information system.