Women have opted to deliver from TBAs just because of poor stocked hospitals, poor roads, bad discipline of the health personnel and high charges in the hospitals.
It is said that mid wives always talk to the pregnant mothers rudely which has forced most of the mothers to visit TBAs who have a good reception for deliveries.
According to the research, the traditional birth attendants are always old in age and experienced but there are some delivery cases that they don’t afford which leads to death of a mother or a newly borne child.
The government banned traditional birth attendants from delivering babies in 2010, in the hopes of improving maternal- and infant-mortality rates. But despite the ubiquitous free prenatal care in government hospitals, the practice continues to be both widespread and popular.
The traditional birth attendants can’t handle haemorrhage in women, which contributes to 42 percent of maternal deaths and is the leading cause of death in maternal mortality in the country.
Despite such policies that hinder or ban the utilisation of TBAs, it is reported that TBAs remain a popular source of care, attending to approximately 47–52 % of all deliveries in some remote districts of Uganda , due to the inability of government to enforce the ban, but also due to embeddedness of TBAs
Speaking to mothers, the TBAs are always caring, welcoming and they charge less money compared to the health facilities.
Some women cite some disadvantages of delivering with the TBAs which included some traditional practices and lack of infection prevention measures which exposes them to infection and unavailability of certain services such as weighing of the baby.
According to Uganda Demographic and Health survey(UDHS) 2022 report, the number of mothers who died during pregnancy, Delivery, or 42 days after delivery stood at 189 deaths per 100,000 live births.This means that a round 2800 mothers died out of an estimated one and a half million births
The 2022 figure is lower than 336 deaths per 100,000 births previously reported in 2016 but a figure is still very high when compared to countries like United Kingdom where only 10 women die out of 100,000 live births.
Though the above report shows that there is a reduced number of deaths, there are higher chances of the numbers of deaths increasing if we on’t improve on our community sensitisation and services offered at the health facilities.
BY CATHELINE ANKUNDA
