Supervised deliveries of infants will greatly improve maternal deaths in Papua New Guinea, says NCD Health Services (NCDHS) coordinator of district health Dr Joyce Sauk.
Dr Sauk highlighted that supervised deliveries and improving the overall family planning coverage greatly improves maternal deaths, at least up to 75 percent.
She revealed that PNG has seen a decreasing supervised delivery statistics at 36 percent and family planning prevalence of 20 percent due to challenges with access to facilities.
Dr Sauk said medical causes of maternal deaths in PNG and almost all preventable include infections following births, miscarriage, abortion, anaemia, malaria, tuberculosis and gender based violence.
Lack of access to basic services is seen as a major contributing factor to maternal deaths.
NCDHS statistics show that the fertility rate of PNG women is 4.3 and 25 percent of women have birth spacing of less than 24 months apart.
Statistics also illustrated that median age of first birth is 20-21 years and an increase in teenage pregnancy to 21 percent especially among girls with no formal education.
Dr Sauk added that death and chronic ill health of mothers results in poor growth and development of her children.