Maternal death rate still too high, minister says

Maternal mortality in Tanzania has remained unacceptably high, claiming the lives of 529 women for every 100,000 live births, Anna Abdallah, the country's minister of health told IRIN on Wednesday, the eve of World Health Day.

"It is alarming," she said.

This death rate, she said, had remained unchanged since the 1990s and the underlying cause for this included malaria, anaemia and HIV/AIDS. She also said the number of pregnant women with access to health services had dropped from 44 percent in the early 1990s to 36 percent today. In some cases, she said, women attending government owned health facilities were asked to provide their own supplies or pay for materials like gloves, gauzes, syringes and medicines.

"Pregnant women are entitled to free antenatal and postnatal services in all governmental health facilities - denying them access to the services is an offence," she said.

Warning that medical practitioners who forced women to buy their own delivery kits would be punished, she urged pregnant women subjected to such misconduct to report the matter to the ministry.

"We are also working out a system for sustainable healthcare and corruption control in hospitals by introducing prepaid services," she added.

Abdallah said the government had introduced a health fund to which rural households contributed 5,000 shillings (US $5) per year, and an insurance health fund for the public service to which the government and civil servants contributed 3 percent of their earnings.