Pretoria - A new policy on contraception and fertility will be launched by year-end to provide women with increased protection against unwanted pregnancies and infection, Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi has said.
Speaking at the launch of the 2013/14 District Health Barometer by the Health Systems Trust in Pretoria, he decried the high rate of teenage pregnancies, and said there was a need for serious intervention if it was to be reduced.
“It’s time we stopped moaning about teen pregnancy and did something about it,” he said.
He did not elaborate on the policy, but said teenage pregnancies contributed a lot to the country’s maternal mortality rate. “We cannot stop it at the hospitals where they go and give birth. We need to address it at the point where it happens,” he said.
The barometer reports on the delivery of primary health care in the public health sector.
The current report shows there is a decrease in the proportion of under-18 deliveries in facilities.
Gauteng had the lowest number of deliveries at 4.8 percent, the highest number found in the Eastern Cape, with 10.3 percent.
“However, I’d like to see an acceleration in the reduction of teenage pregnancies. We need to work harder to ensure teenagers do not fall pregnant,” the minister said.
Motsoaledi also expressed his disappointment at the increased Caesarean rate, which stands at 20.8 percent. “The risk posed by unnecessary C-sections is well known and high,” he said, adding that it was commercially driven in the private health sector, where it was close to 70 percent.
There were no charges for it in the public health sector he said. “People do not want to sit and watch over a pregnant patient until she goes into labour and has a baby naturally.” It was either that, or people had lost sight of the benefits of natural birth, he said.
The still-birth rate, he noted, was the lowest since 2001/02, the greatest decline in the Free State.
Gauteng had made the most notable increase in the number of adults on antiretroviral (ARV) treatment. “KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng have the most children on ARVs as a result of their large populations and high HIV prevalence.”
Motsoaledi said the results of the District Health Barometer would be used to plan for the 2014/15 financial year.
Public health specialist, Dr Peter Barron, said the country is well on its way to meeting the targets of the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals. Some have already been matched, and others have almost been achieved.
The eight goals set up in 1990 to be met by 2015 include the eradication of poverty, the reduction of child mortality and maternal deaths, and targets for the reduction of HIV infection rates and the transmission of mother to child infection.
He was speaking at a Health System’s Trust workshop before the launch of the barometer.
He said the major causes of child and infant mortality are pneumonia, malnutrition, diarrhoea, prematurity and asphyxia
. - Pretoria News