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The DA has written to the Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Health and Social Development, Patricia Ngobeni, to request that she summon Health MEC, Gillion Mashego, to brief the committee on why the maternal mortality target for the 2017/18 financial year has increased.

The Health Department’s first quarterly report for 2017/18 indicates that the target for maternal mortality has been increased from 102/100 000 in the previous financial year to an alarming 140 /100 000.

In the Department’s fourth quarterly report for the previous financial year, it stated that the challenges for not meeting the previous target of 102/100 000 was due to the poor management of hypertensive disorders at an antenatal care level.

By moving the target to match the actual number of deaths, the Health Department is demonstrating that it has no real plan to address the challenges facing pregnant women or new mothers. It also shows that the Department has no real plan to reduce maternal mortality and women will continue to suffer as a result.

While MEC Mashego continues to gamble with the lives of pregnant women in Mpumalanga, the DA government in the Western Cape is already piloting aspects of a plan that has seen maternal mortality rates being reduced to about half the South African average.

MEC Mashego is clearly failing in his duty to protect women and must be called before the portfolio committee to explain why he has allowed the Health Department to be so nonchalant about increasing maternal mortality rate targets.

Issued by DA