Veep Opoku-Agyemang launches PRIMER to improve emergency care for pregnant women

The government has launched a five-year Presidential Initiative on Maternal Health Emergency Response (PRIMER) to reduce preventable maternal deaths and improve emergency care for pregnant women across Ghana.

The initiative was launched in Accra on Monday by Vice President Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang on behalf of President John Dramani Mahama. The Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection, Dr Agnes Naa Momo Lartey, Deputy Minister of Health Dr Grace Ayensu Danquah, and other officials and stakeholders attended the event.

PRIMER brings together government institutions, development partners, health professionals, traditional and religious leaders, civil society organisations and communities to address the social, economic and health-system factors contributing to maternal mortality.

Dr Agnes Naa Momo Lartey said the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection was committed to supporting PRIMER by addressing inequalities and vulnerabilities that prevent women and girls from accessing timely healthcare.

She said women should not be deterred from seeking medical attention because they lack information, financial resources, permission or confidence to make decisions about their health.

The ministry, she said, would continue to strengthen gender-responsive interventions focused on women’s welfare, access to information, economic empowerment and participation in household and community decision-making.

Dr Lartey also highlighted the vulnerability of adolescent girls, particularly those affected by poverty, child marriage, school dropout and limited access to sexual and reproductive health information and services.

She said protecting girls from child marriage, violence and exploitation was an important part of improving maternal health outcomes. The ministry would work with relevant institutions and partners to keep girls in school, promote their empowerment and address conditions that increase the risk of early pregnancy.

Dr Lartey further noted that transportation, food, medicines, childcare and other household expenses could prevent vulnerable families from seeking healthcare promptly.

She said social protection programmes had a complementary role in easing the economic pressures that limit access to essential services.

The ministry would collaborate with the Ministry of Health, the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), local assemblies, traditional and religious authorities, civil society organisations and development partners.

Dr Lartey said the collaboration would ensure that the gender, economic and social dimensions of maternal mortality were incorporated into the national response. The ministry would also strengthen community awareness of antenatal care, birth preparedness, pregnancy danger signs and the need to seek emergency care without delay.

Vice President Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang said Ghana had made important gains in maternal healthcare, with about nine out of 10 women receiving at least four antenatal care visits and roughly the same proportion delivering in health facilities.

She said skilled health personnel attended about 86 per cent of births, indicating that more women were accessing formal healthcare.

Despite the progress, the Vice President said Ghana’s maternal mortality ratio remained unacceptably high and above the Sustainable Development Goal target of fewer than 70 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births by 2030.

She called for greater attention to service quality and readiness, emergency response, transportation, communication and coordination between referring and receiving health facilities.

Professor Opoku-Agyemang said Ghana had dedicated midwives, nurses, doctors, managers and community health workers, and already knew many of the interventions capable of saving mothers’ lives.

She cited improvements in some areas as evidence that strong leadership, disciplined teamwork and quality improvement could produce better outcomes.

The Vice President also referred to President Mahama’s earlier account of an intervention during his first administration that reportedly brought maternal deaths to zero in Dodowa.

She said the leading causes of maternal deaths were well known and largely preventable or treatable. Deaths linked to delays, shortages of essential materials, inadequate emergency capacity and slow corrective action were therefore particularly tragic.

Professor Opoku-Agyemang said PRIMER was designed to tackle obstacles that individual health institutions could not resolve alone, including challenges involving financing, infrastructure, staffing, procurement, data and community mobilisation.

She said the initiative would identify interventions producing better outcomes in high-performing locations and support their application elsewhere.

According to the Vice President, PRIMER was presented in February 2026 to the SDGs Implementation Coordination Committee at the NDPC, a multisectoral technical working group, before developing into the five-year initiative being launched.

She outlined three broad pillars underpinning the programme:

1. Political leadership and social mobilisation: Strengthening coordination among ministries, public institutions, local governments, traditional and religious leaders, civil society, the private sector and communities.
2. Institutionalised accountability and evidence-based action: Improving maternal and perinatal death surveillance and response, enhancing the timeliness and quality of data, clarifying institutional responsibilities and supporting regular high-level reviews.
3. Sustainable domestic financing: Securing reliable national funding while mobilising responsible external support.

The initiative will cover maternity and newborn care, referral and transport systems, access to blood, medicines and essential equipment, community engagement and the use of data to improve decision-making.

The Vice President said the implementation framework must clearly define targets, responsibilities and reporting arrangements. Progress, she said, should be reviewed regularly, with lessons from high-performing regions and facilities applied elsewhere.

She cautioned that PRIMER should not operate as a stand-alone programme or duplicate existing government interventions. Instead, it must work within existing institutional mandates while helping to close persistent gaps.

Professor Opoku-Agyemang said factors affecting maternal survival extended beyond the health sector to include roads, communication, transportation, water and energy.

She called for cooperation with institutions responsible for those areas to ensure that existing programmes contributed to reducing maternal deaths.

She also acknowledged development partners, saying their support should strengthen national systems and help Ghana identify interventions that could be sustained and expanded.

The Vice President urged families and communities to encourage women to seek care early, recognise danger signs and ensure that women receive support rather than face delays. Traditional and religious leaders, civil society organisations and the media, she added, also had a role in reinforcing those messages.

“It is not enough for many more women to enter our health facilities,” she said, stressing that success should ultimately be measured by whether mothers and their babies returned home safely.

She commended health professionals in maternal and newborn care for making critical decisions under pressure and responding to emergencies to protect mothers and babies.

Deputy Minister of Health Dr Grace Ayensu Danquah provided an update on Ghana’s maternal mortality situation.

She disclosed that 134 women had died while attempting to give birth, with many of the cases involving referrals. She said a significant proportion of the deaths had occurred in the Ashanti Region.

Dr Danquah said the figures underscored the need to strengthen referral systems, emergency preparedness and the capacity of receiving health facilities.

She said the statistics reinforced the urgency of initiatives such as PRIMER, particularly efforts to ensure that women who develop complications are transported quickly and receive appropriate care upon arrival at health facilities.

The launch brought together representatives of the NDPC, UNFPA, development partners, civil society organisations, traditional and religious leaders and the media.

The government says PRIMER’s ultimate goal is to ensure that preventable complications during pregnancy and childbirth no longer result in the loss of mothers’ lives.