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MamaYe Advocacy Coalition, a coalition promoting health in Ghana, has called on management of Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) to help expand access to better quality maternal and newborn health services. The hospital should also remove barriers to such services to ensure that no mother or child dies needlessly, it said. The call was made in an open petition by the Coalition to KATH, copied to the Ghana News Agency, based on reports that KATH recorded 1,130 maternal deaths between 2005 and June 2013. The petition, which was to mark the 2013 World Children�s Day on Wednesday, said; �as members of the public, we were left in a state of shock when we heard that the KATH has recorded 1,130 maternal deaths between 2005 and June 2013�. It said the unfortunate statistics released by the administrators of the hospital in October was worrying. The hospital had since expressed concern about the high rate of maternal mortality and had blamed the situation on complicated cases referred from peripheral hospitals. The Coalition said it went without saying that with such high avoidable maternal deaths, Ghana stood the risk of falling far off the Millennium Development Goals 4&5. According to KATH, 20 peripheral hospitals had been identified within its surrounding areas where consultants and senior specialists from the hospital would be attached to provide guidance and consultancy services to medical officers when the need arose. The Coalition, however, said; �For us, it is not acceptable that an average of 132 pregnant women die every year at a leading healthcare provider such as KATH. This action being taken is very heartwarming, but as we mark the World Children�s Day today, we are calling on the authorities of the hospital to act beyond this level.� The Coalition said it was concerned about the specific timelines in deploying the consultants to the peripheral health centres and explained clearly how the strategy would be a success. While the Coalition was grateful for the figures on maternal deaths, it expected the KATH to release figures on newborn deaths registered at the hospital within the same period. It said by providing better maternal healthcare, it would also help reduce the mortality rate of the newborn as well. It called on the KATH Management to ensure a well-functioning hospital with high impact emergency obstetric care services and skilled care at birth to increase maternal and newborn survival. The hospital should also offer the services of obstetricians, family physicians, and midwives to peripheral clinics to ensure that quality care is improved drastically. The Coalition further asked for the streamlining of hospital referral arrangements to ensure effective management of pregnancy-associated risks, provide patients who had pregnancy-related complications with greater education on those complications and how to manage them. On the newborn, the Coalition said the hospital should improve baby-friendly health systems and high impact care to deliver lifesaving interventions, especially at the time of birth, provide midwives, nurses and community health workers of peripheral health centres with the appropriate training to prevent and respond to complications from preterm birth. It called for the training of midwives and all birth attendants to help newborn babies survive the �golden minute� - that first moment after birth when, if a baby is not breathing spontaneously, a simple intervention can save his or her life. The Coalition said frontline officials should be trained to empower women and girls so that they could make the health decisions that were best for themselves and their babies, especially to plan their families. In administration and accountability, the Coalition asked for the provision of better co-ordination and information sharing across peripheral or community-based health centres and primary healthcare providers. It said constraints including financial, institutional, and human resources distribution in the health delivery system of the hospital must be addressed to improve quality of care and access to services. Make reporting, prevention, screening and intervention practices a priority for all health officials at the peripheral health facilities and better supervision and mentorship to improve quality of care, job satisfaction of health personnel, and increase the dialogue and collaboration amongst skilled birth attendants including nurses, midwives and doctors, it said.