Health care needs to reach communities - Sylwander

Health care needs to reach communities - Sylwander
By Masuzyo Chakwe
Saturday April 07, 2007 [04:00]

UNICEF country representative Lotta Sylwander has said there is need to bring health care down to the communities in order to reduce the high maternal mortality rate. And first lady Maureen Mwanawasa said there was still a lot of room for improvement in the health care system in Zambia.

Commenting on the 'World Health day, ' under the theme 'International health security', which falls today, Sylwander said the maternal mortality rate in Zambia was staggering and appalling. She said it was one of the highest in the world and did not need to be that high. "This is country with both human and other resources and UNICEF, for one, are working very hard on trying to lower the number of maternal deaths, child deaths or infants deaths and there are quite simple methods that can be used in heath care facilities in meeting the needs of mothers and children," she said.

Sylwander said UNICEF was working very closely with the Ministry of Health. "What I think we need to do is to bring health care down to the communities and the knowledge of what should be done around child birth and around the first few months of a child's life both with the mother and the child and I am sure the figures will drop quite dramatically once that knowledge is brought down to community level," she said.
She also said Zambia was not making much progress on the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on maternal mortality.

"In terms of health, we are not making progress quite rapidly but we are definitely making progress on the MDG on education and it's quite possible that Zambia will meet the MDG on education," she said. "It was a known fact that Zambia is very far away from meeting the MDGs on health and unfortunately this includes the HIV/AIDS goal."

Sylwander said the main problem with HIV/AIDS was change of behaviour.
She said information was getting out to people but they were not internalising it. "People are not using the information that they have. As a children's organisation, we work a lot on preventing mother-to-child transmission and that is also fairly easily done. We work also with promoting exclusive breast feeding which also prevents mother-to-child transfer," said Sylwander.

And Maureen said Zambia was trying under the circumstances but there was still a lot of room for improvement. "Next week on the 10th, there will be a very big continental conference in South Africa to which we as Organisation of African First Ladies Against AIDS OAFLA has been invited. The summit will be trying to come up with a health policy for the continent so it is being prepared by the African Union. So you see that even at continental level, these are challenges of our African leaders," she said.

Maureen said Zambia compared to other African countries had the best health systems but the challenge was manpower and equipment. She said she was hoping that as the economy improved, the budget for the health sector could increase. "Of course the issue of maternal deaths is still a problem but it is a problem where solutions have been found and as soon as implementation can start the better. In a small way as MMCI, we have been trying to bring strategic partners on board," she said.

Maureen said Zambia on the continent had done very well in dealing with the HIV/AIDS because of the political will from leaders. "The fact that we are human beings, the challenges of low condom use will follow us but we are not relaxing because some people are not changing their lifestyles but we believe we can save others," she said. Maureen hoped research going on to find a cure for AIDS could be speeded up.