A surrogate mother is a woman who becomes pregnant usually by artificial insemination or surgical implantation of a fertilized egg for the purpose of carrying the fetus to term for another woman.

 

The Society expressed discomfort with the public outcry of the alleged exploitation of surrogate mothers by some doctors and nurses and other health workers to the disregard of the ethics of the medical profession.

 

“It is sickening to sometimes hear that health workers have allegedly imprisoned surrogates in their homes or allegedly stolen babies”, Dr Isaac Charles Noble Morrison, the National President of the SPMDP-Gh), said.

 

He was addressing the three-day 2017 Annual General Meeting of the Society held under the theme: “infant and maternal health and the attainment of the SDG goals”.

 

Dr Morrison said there is the need for surrogate mothers, their clients and health workers to know their accepted rights, duties and responsibility towards surrogate motherhood, and this, he added could be done with the enactment of laws.

 

Touching on the theme for the meeting, the National President said several interventions have been introduced at various stages to arrest maternal mortality and children under five mortality rates in the country.

 

Some of the interventions are plan Five Alive, Make Every Baby Count Initiative and System for Health, Dr Morrison, said in spite of all the efforts being made maternal mortality and infant deaths remain a huge national challenge.

 

“We are still around the same median of 20.0 for under five mortality and 151.9 for maternal mortality rates. It is not the absolute figures that should be our priority but it is the study of variations. Interventions should produce significant changes which must be sustained”, he explained.

 

Dr Albert Kwadwo Amankwaa, the Brong-Ahafo Regional Chairman of the Society, said significant strides have been made in increasing life expectancy and reducing some of the common killers associated with child and maternal mortalities.

 

He said many more needed to be done to improve what has been achieved like improved access to clean water and sanitation, improvement in access to education, reducing infections like malaria, TB, Polio, HIV/AIDS as well as improved child care, family planning and antenatal care among others.

 

Dr Amankwaa said it remains a fact that more than six million children still die before their fifth birthday each year across the globe of which four out of every five deaths of children occurred in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia.

 

GNA