By MAUREEN GERAWA

THE number of women dying during childbirth in Papua New Guinea has doubled since 1996, but the issue has not been declared an emergency because it is not a disease, a meeting was told yesterday.

A roundtable meeting on safe motherhood held at the Parliament Function room has also heard that five women in Papua New Guinea die during childbirth everyday.

This is one of the highest maternal death rates in the Asia-Pacific region and a small group of people that had attended this meeting want to do something about it. They represented clinicians, midwives, community practitioners at the frontlines of tackling the issue such as the Susu Mamas, policymakers, advocates such as the Voice which is a group of students at the University of Papua New Guinea and the disabled community.

The discussions highlighted issues such as a need to train more midwives as there are not enough around; lack of basic health care for majority of the people in rural areas; the need to improve and strengthen family planning services and maternal health care programs; and the need to tackle gender related violence that is contributing to ill-health of women.

The lack of infrasfracture in rural areas to lure health workers to rural areas had also been highlighted as one of the reasons for specialist health workers refusing to go to work in rural areas.

“It is about helping families.I don’t know which man would want to see their sister die,’’ Ms Fifer, Chairperson of the Australian Safe Motherhood for All Alliance, said, when highlighting the urgency of tackling the high mortality rate in PNG. “This is a sister solidarity issue.’’

Ms Fifer said Cairns, Australia, was only 40 minutes away from PNG and yet there were great disparities in the number of women dying due to childbirth in both countries.

Many in Australia, she said, are shock when given statistics on the high maternal mortality rate in this country and would want to help improve life for their sisters.

United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Assistant country representative Dr Gabriel Hiawalyer said UNFPA was ready to help in the formation of a network whose aim is to make a difference in the battle to reduce the high maternal mortality rate.

The organization has also helped supported the set up of the PNG Parliamentary Population and Development Committee to advocate in Parliament on issues relating to population and is currently assisting the committee to set up a secretariat to help the committee.

Dame Carol said there was a need to form an alliance or a group to advocate on safe motherhood in order for decision-makers such as the Parliament to take note and allocate resources for safe motherhood.

She also said she was not being asked questions on the floor of Parliament on issues on children and women because of lack of knowledge so MPs needed to be made aware of these issues.

World Health Organisation country representative Dr Eigil Sorensen said the doubling of the number of women dying due to complications in childbirth and pregnancy was shocking, particularly when PNG is a signatory to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The goal number 5 is on maternal health and the promise by signatories of MDGs is to reduce maternal mortality by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015.

Meanwhile, President of the Assembly of Disabled Persons Ipul Powaseu has urged that the safe motherhood programs must be inclusive of the persons with disabled persons who have a right to have children, but often due to ignorance they are not being given the care due to them.