Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has called for increased and urgent response to maternal and child health care in the Central African Republic (CAR).
According to the organisation, also known as Doctors Without Borders, maternal and neonatal health care is a major health emergency in CAR following decades of instability and armed violence in the country.
These security situations have contributed to essential medical care being out of reach for many pregnant women and newborns.
Data from the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) estimates that CAR’s mortality rate for children under age five remains at 103 per 1000 live births.
Also, recent statistics from the World Bank show women are 138 times more likely to die of pregnancy and delivery complications in CAR than in the European Union.
‘Many women do not go to a health centres for their delivery but give birth at home. In this situation, complications can easily lead to the death of mother or child’, MSF’s midwife at Bangui’s community hospital, Adèle Guerde-Seweïen, said.
Many of these deaths could be avoided if healthc are was available, either in terms of pregnancy support or family planning provision.
The country’s chronic medical emergency is also fuelled by extreme poverty: although maternal and child health care is officially free in CAR, too often it is only available to those who can pay.
‘In a country where 70 percent of people live on less than U.S.$2 a day, every decision must be weighed up financially, even if it means putting one’s health at risk’, the MSF Head of Mission in CAR, René Colgo, said.
‘For patients, going to hospital is an expense. They don’t have money to pay for antenatal care, nor for transport to hospital, let alone for the delivery.
‘Many women think it is better to go to hospital at the last minute, if at all. Supporting the provision of free care is therefore vital’.
MSF said the situation calls for ambitious investment by all international partners to strengthen access to reproductive health services as more support is needed to bring essential health care services to women and babies countrywide.
Source: MSF
Photo source: MSF