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Maternal mortality is a women’s empowerment emergency
A woman who dies in childbirth does not only lose her life. She loses every plan she was still building. It could be plans to grow her business, achieve higher education or create a brighter future for her children.
Maternal mortality is a direct blow to women’s empowerment because empowerment and potential mean little if a woman cannot survive the act of giving life.
The baby survives. Sometimes the baby does not. Either way, a family is left asking the same unbearable question: why should a woman go to a health facility to give life and never return home?
Recent national data presented by the Ghana Health Service (GHS) revealed that 955 maternal deaths were recorded in 2025, up from 779 in 2016.
The figures were disclosed by the Director of the GHS Family Health Division, Dr Kennedy Brightson, at a February 2026 workshop on pre-eclampsia and maternal anaemia, where he noted that hypertensive disorders remain a leading cause.
Separate concerns raised at a national dialogue in late 2025 had already painted a disturbing picture of the maternal health crisis. The Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection, Dr Agnes Naa Momo Lartey, and Deputy Chief of Staff, Oye Bampoe Addo during the dialogue called for urgent and coordinated national action to address the problem.
Successive governments have introduced measures to protect mothers and reduce preventable deaths, but the numbers tell us that far more must be done.
The time for incremental action is over. Ghana must act with greater urgency, stronger commitment and sustained investment to ensure that no woman pays with her life for the privilege of bringing another life into the world.
Maternal death must be treated with the urgency of a national emergency because that is exactly what it is!
This deadly menace is not only a health problem, but a gender equality and development crisis.
A woman’s life should not be the price of motherhood
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has repeatedly stressed that most maternal deaths are preventable. Major causes, according to the WHO include severe bleeding, infections, high blood pressure disorders, complications during delivery and unsafe abortion. Prevention requires more than telling women to attend hospital. Care must be available, affordable, timely and good, backed by skilled personnel, working emergency services, reliable supplies and faster ambulances.
Antenatal care is not optional
Women must be empowered with information. Pregnancy is not a condition to be managed with rumours or myths. Regular antenatal care matters because dangerous complications, especially pre-eclampsia, can be detected early through warning signs such as severe headaches, visual disturbances and swelling of the hands and face.
In some communities, swollen feet are dismissed as normal or explained through myths, including the belief that it signals a woman is carrying a boy. Such beliefs delay care, and a pregnant woman should never gamble with her life because a symptom has been explained away by tradition.
A caesarean section is not a curse
One of the most dangerous misconceptions in childbirth, among some rural women especially, is the belief that a caesarean section represents failure, weakness or a spiritual problem. It does not. It is a medical procedure that can save the life of a mother, her baby or both, and no woman should reject one out of fear of ridicule or religious condemnation. The goal of childbirth is for mother and baby to survive, not to prove a woman can endure labour.
Religious leaders carry real responsibility here. Faith should support medical care, not stand in opposition to it. A woman who undergoes a medically necessary caesarean has not failed, she has been helped to protect her life and her child’s.
Referral should not become a death sentence in people’s minds
There is troubling fear surrounding referral to major hospitals. Some families hear stories of people dying after referral and conclude that referral itself signals impending death, which creates dangerous delay. Referral is often necessary precisely because a woman needs specialised care. This does not excuse the health system from scrutiny, but fear and misinformation must not stop women from reaching the care they urgently need.
Maternal mortality is not a problem affecting only poor, rural or uneducated women. Poverty raises risk, but educated and financially stable women also face severe complications. Every woman deserves quality maternal healthcare.
Ghana must move from mourning to more action
According to the WHO, more than 700 women globally died every day in 2023 from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth, with sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia accounting for the overwhelming majority. Ghana should not treat each maternal death as unfortunate but inevitable. Every death must raise questions: was the woman monitored, did she seek care early, was referral timely, did the facility have adequate staff, blood and medicine? The answers must lead to action.
A society cannot claim to empower women while accepting preventable deaths in pregnancy and childbirth as “normal.” The health system must be strengthened and communities educated, so that families stop pressuring women to reject medical intervention.
Every maternal death is a devastating failure that demands immediate action, accountability and results!
A call to Africa’s leaders
Leadership is measured by whose lives are protected, not just whose economies grow. Every maternal death recorded on a ministry’s desk represents a woman who trusted her country with her life and was let down. Budgets must reach the last clinic, not just the capital. Policies mean nothing if a rural mother still bleeds to death waiting for an ambulance that never comes. Africa cannot rise while burying the women who carry its future. Let this be the generation of leaders who choose accountability and decisive action over anything else!
By Raissa Sambou
The writer is a children’s rights advocate and the founder of The Raissa Child Protection Initiative.
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On Sunday, October 11, 2026, it was the turn of Ghanaian Catholics in Finland to lead the singing in the church service of the African Catholic Chaplaincy in Finland (ACCF).
It was indeed a spirit-filled feeling for worshippers present. And for the Ghanaian migrants, the occasion also brought back to them memories of church services in their home country, Ghana.
The ACCF has a roster for each country/community to sing from time to time. Next Sunday will be the turn of the Nigerian community. Other communities that usually sing are the Kenyan/Tanzanian community, the Cameroonian, the Ugandan, group, etc.
A powerful religious experience
The mass services of the Chaplaincy usually give a powerful religious experience and a display of cultural diversity, especially in occasions such as when the Bishop of Helsinki, Bishop Raimo Goyarrola, celebrated mass with the Chaplaincy on Pentecost Day, May 24, 2026.
There was a similar time of spiritual joy last month (September 27, 2026) when Emeritus Bishop Teemu Sippo, former Bishop of Helsinki, visited the Chaplaincy. Bishop Teemu was the main celebrant, assisted by the Chaplain, Reverend Father Thomas Otieno.
Last Sunday, Reverend Father Bernard Sor, a Ghanaian Catholic priest based in Austria, was the main celebrant in the mass service where he performed a rite of baptism. Fr Bernard had celebrated mass a few months ago when he visited his sister and her husband in Helsinki. 
All these well-attended religious occasions indeed leave lasting memories. The homilies (peaching) by the priests usually emphasize religious tenets such as the importance of loving and serving God in truth, existing in peace with our fellow humans to promote unity in diversity, etc.
Unity in diversity and a colourful display of cultures
The African Chaplaincy church services usually produce impressive displays of diverse cultures from different parts of Africa and elsewhere. The events are often spiced by rich cultural displays of dances and colourful attires which are a delight to watch.
On special occasions, members of the Ghanaian Catholic community, in their gay and colourful kente attire and with adowa dance and music, usually lead the procession into the church. Other communities such as the Cameroonian, Nigerian, Kenyan and Tanzanian as well as Sudanese/South Sudanese groups also put up well-choreographed performances from their cultures.
The African Catholic Chaplaincy in Finland
The African Chaplaincy was founded on June 4, 2017, which was a Pentecost Sunday, in a Pontifical High Mass celebrated by Monsignor Emeritus Sippo S.C.I., the then Bishop of Helsinki, at the St. Mary’s Catholic Parish Church in Helsinki.
The Chaplaincy was created by Bishop Teemu in collaboration with the Diocesan body when they detected a great flocking of African immigrants to Finland, the majority of whom were Catholics. This was to give the immigrants a possibility to integrate into the Finnish society by worshiping as Catholics and in their African cultural identity.
The responsibility of the Chaplaincy was given by Bishop Teemu to Father Dr Leonard Wobilla Shwei, who is thus the first Chaplain and ably led the Chaplaincy. He was succeeded a few years ago by Father Thomas Otieno, who continues to move the Chaplaincy forward. Thank you!
GHANA MATTERS column appears fortnightly. Written in simple, layman’s terms, it concentrates on matters about Ghana and beyond. It focuses on everyday life issues relating to the social, cultural, economic, religious, political, health, sports, youth, gender, etc. It strives to remind us all that Ghana comes first. The column also takes a candid look at the meanings and repercussions of our actions, especially those things we take for granted or even ignore. There are key Ghanaian values we should uphold rather than disregard with impunity. We should not overlook the obvious. We need to search for the hidden or deeply embedded values and try to project them.
With Dr Perpetual Crentsil
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She did not find out he was cheating. She found out he was drowning.
It was two weeks after their beautiful wedding. The jollof was still in the fridge. A loan officer called her number-not his-and politely asked, “Madam, please tell your husband to pay his overdue loan. We have been calling him.”
That was how she discovered her new husband had entered their marriage with a hidden debt of over GH¢ 40,000. No cheating. No other woman. Just a financial secret.
And that is how many Ghanaian marriages begin to die. Not with a shout, but with a secret alert on a phone.
We prepare for the wedding. We do not prepare for the wallet.
What is money honesty?
Let me define it simply. Money honesty is not that you both earn the same. It is that you both know the same. It is the ability to sit down and say without fear:
“This is how much I earn.”
“This is how much I owe.”
“This is how I was raised to see money.”
“This is what scares me about money.”
Financial transparency is not about control. It is about clarity. You cannot build trust on top of secrets.
Many couples tell me, “Counsellor, we love each other, love will handle money.” I always answer, “Love is the car, but money honesty is the fuel. Love without honesty cannot move.”
How To Buy Your Marriage Insurance Today – My 5-Step Protocol
If you are engaged, newly married, or even 20 years in marriage, you can still fix this. At Counsellor Prince & Associates Consult—CPAC, this is what I give couples:
Step 1: The 90-Minute Money Naked Session.
No phones, no blame. Each partner writes down on paper: Monthly income, monthly debts, monthly family obligations, savings, and your biggest money fear. Then you exchange papers. Read it. Don’t react for 24 hours. Just absorb.
Step 2: Create OUR Money, YOUR Money, My Money.
You need three pots. OUR money for rent, food, school fees, utilities, properties, and the like— joint contribution. YOUR money and MY money—a small agreed allowance no one questions. This stops the feeling of being controlled.
Step 3: The No-Secret Debt Rule.
Agree from today: No new loan, no new hire purchase, no new family financial commitment above GHS 500 without telling each other first. Not permission, but information.
Step 4: Talk About Your Money Personality.
Are you a Spender or a Saver? Are you Risky or Safe? Most Ghanaian marriages are a Spender married to a Saver. Neither is wrong. But if you don’t understand your partner’s personality, you will call his saving “stinginess” and her spending “wastefulness.”
Step 5: Do a Monthly 30-Minute Money Date
Not an argument date. Light, with tea. “How did we do this month? What worried you? What should we plan for next month?” Couples who do this divorce far less.
My Final Word
Before you say “I Do” at the altar, have pre-marital counselling and also have the money talk on the sofa.
Ask your partner:
“If I lost my job today, how long can we survive?”
“What debt are you bringing into this marriage?”
“How much do you send to your family monthly and will that continue?”
If he or she gets angry that you asked, don’t get married yet. A person who is angry about accountability will be abusive about money.
Marriage insurance is not bought at Star Assurance or Enterprise. It is bought in honest conversations when no one is watching.
The wedding costs one day. The marriage costs a lifetime. Don’t enter a lifetime contract and covenant with hidden costs.
You can still insure your marriage today.
Source:
Counselor Prince Offei, CPAC’s founder, is a leading Mental Health Professional, Marriage Counsellor, Author, ADR Expert/Arbitrator, and Spectator Newspaper Columnist. He writes on relationships, marriage, parenting, special needs support, and their connection to mental health. For therapy, counselling, or enquiries, contact Counselor Prince & Associates Consult (CPAC) in Accra on 0559850604 / 0551428486.
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