The Society of Private Medical and Dental Practitioners – Ghana (SPMDP-Gh) over the weekend called for the enactment of laws to protect and guarantee the rights and privileges of surrogate mothers in the country.
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.
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Source: GNA