Nii Martey M. Botchway
Accra, Feb 26, GNA – A novel project leveraging big tech solutions has been launched as part of efforts aimed at preventing maternal mortality in Ghana.
The ‘On Tackling In-transit delays for Mothers in Emergency (OnTIME) Ghana project leverages Google’s Directions API technology to address the delays expectant mothers experience when accessing health facilities, especially in emergency situations.
It aims at improving maternal health outcomes by reducing delays in reaching emergency obstetric care facilities using technology to estimate travel times to the nearest health facilities.
Speaking at a research dissemination workshop in Accra, Dr. Aduragbemi Banke-Thomas, Associate Professor of Maternal and Newborn Health at LSHTM, and the project’s Principal Investigator, said the data helps identify areas with limited access to emergency obstetric care, and enables policymakers and stakeholders to make informed decisions.
He said a research was conducted in the Greater Accra Region to identify the challenges pregnant women encounter in accessing critical maternal health services.
He said the evidence showed that long travel times from the home to a health facility significantly impact pregnancy outcomes for mothers and newborns.
Dr. Banke-Thomas revealed that the eastern part of Accra faced significant challenges with timely access to maternal health care.
He noted also that contrary to beliefs that delays in accessing timely maternal services were mostly experienced in rural areas, the research indicated that women in urban areas experienced the same delays, mostly because of traffic situations in the cities.
He said the OnTIME-Google dashboard has helped identify hotspots where pregnant women face significant delays in accessing care, stating that timely access to emergency obstetric care (EmOC) can reduce maternal deaths and intrapartum stillbirths significantly.
“By leveraging Google’s technology to address these challenges, we can improve maternal health outcomes,” he said.
Dr. Winfred Dotse-Gborgbortsi, a Spacial Epidemiologist at the University of Southampton, giving an overview said the workshop aimed at discussing maternal health, with a focus on the journeys of pregnant women, and what could be done to improve their experience of care, and ensure the right outcomes during delivery.
He said the project which gathered data on service provision across the region shows promise, even though there were some improvements that needed to be attended to in some facilities.
The data which will be shared among stakeholders and policy makers forms part of the global efforts to reduce maternal mortality with Google’s support Dr. Dotse-Gborgbortsi said.
“The data is to help them generate actionable insights to support the decisions they make for birth outcomes for women and babies,” he said
Dr. Dotse-Gborgbortsi expressed the hope that the evidence gathered would be put to best use as they have the potential to make a significant impact on maternal health in Ghana.
For his part, Prof Anthony Ofosu, a lecturer at the Community Health Department, School of Medicine at the University of Health and Allied Science, said the OnTIME project would reduce the travel time of pregnant women in accessing health care.
He said routine data from the past indicates that most of the maternal mortalities recorded were due to long travel time rather than distance.
He said while premium was placed on distance from a referral facility to another, the research has proven that the transit times were invariably too long.
“Time does matter, and for women, more than one hour transit time can be perilous to them,” he said.
Prof Ofusu said there was a need for a multi-sectorial approach in using the findings to facilitate early movements of ambulances to care, especially in urbanized areas where traffic is high.
“We need to either make investments to improve transit time, or create high end care facilities closer to the women,” he said.
The OnTIME Ghana project is spearheaded by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), and University of Ghana, in collaboration in collaboration with the Ghana Health Service and the Ministry of Health.
GNA