RP mothers still suffering from high mortality rate

THE Philippines is still struggling in dealing with maternal deaths despite achievements in women empowerment and gender equality.

This was revealed by former President turned Pampanga second district Rep. Gloria Arroyo during her speaking engagements at the Fifth Clinton Global Initiative conference held in New York, United States, her spokesman Ma. Elena Bautista-Horn said Friday.

Horn, in a press statement, said that the former president noted that the Philippines faces the difficult challenge of reducing maternal mortality from 160 out of 100,000 in 2009 to 55 out of 100,000 in 2015 as mandated by the United Nations Millennium Development Goal 5.

“In the Philippines and in many other developing countries, this is not only a matter of statistics and women empowerment, but more so the promotion of an intact family unit which is the breeding ground of an individual’s values and direction for the future,” Horn said.

Most of the maternal deaths, Horn said, are caused by the absence of birth expert assistance and facility. With mothers, contribute to more children without directions due to the absence of nurturing moms thereby affecting succeeding generations.

As such, Horn said that the former president cited the initiatives addressing this concern during immediate past administration such as the broader availability of health care services for women including the qualification of pregnancy for public health insurance, the prioritization of facility based delivery rather than home-based delivery, and local government support in upgrading primary hospitals to secondary hospitals with gyne-cological, obstetrics and surgical services.

In bolstering her claims that the previous administration did well concerning women welfare, Horn cited that the during congressman Arroyo’s term as a president, she has put landmark legislation for women such as the Magna Carta for Women, the Anti-Violence against women and the 2003 Anti-Trafficking of Persons Act.

Furthermore, Horn added that the Philippines, under Arroyo’s watch, is the only country that has automatic appropriation of 5 percent of annual budgets of government agencies for the empowerment of Filipino women.

As a result, Horn said that there has been a significant increase of women in the labor force in the country with 49 percent of all women now working, topping gender equality among managers, professional and technical workers. –Llanesca T. Panti, Manila Times