The children’s charity suggests in its latest State of the World’s Mothers report that though Rwanda was lagging behind Uganda on the number of mothers giving births at health centers, the percentage change between 2007 and last year was much higher. This means that more and more expectant mothers are making sure they seek medical support.
As for government, it said Wednesday that the percentage of assisted births were close to 40 percent by 2005 and increased by 12.1% in 2007/2008. The mothers delivering in health facilities increased from 35% in 2007 to 45.2% in 2008, according to the Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy (EDPRS) progress report 2008.
All interventions impacted positively on the infant mortality which decreased from 8.2% in 2007 to 6.2% in 2008. As concerns family planning, there has been a significant increase of 17% from 10% in 2007 to 27% in 2008 with a significant difference between the urban area (36%) and the rural areas (26%).
The increase impacted on the reduction of the fertility rate which decreased from 6.1 in 2005/2007 to 5.5 in 2008 with an important diminution among women in the rural areas (6.3 to 5.7) than women in the urban areas (4.9 to 4.7).
Pre-natal care coverage increased by 2% from 94 percent of women consulting a medical professional during their last pregnancy in 2007 to 96% in 2008. Experts say that the level of instruction of the mother influences in the positive manner the recourse to the care of the pregnancy.
The Save the Children report, made in commemoration of Mother’s Day, analyses maternal mortality, life expectancy for girls, contraceptive use, education level, maternity-leave benefits, gender balance in government and income ratio of women to men.
Rwanda has the highest number of seats in Parliament occupied by women; about 56% of MPs are female, followed by Uganda and Burundi (31%) and Tanzania (30%). Kenya lags behind with only 10% of their legislators being women.
Rwanda is also standing out among the top countries that are spending a significant portion of its budget on the health sector. For the 2009/10 spending plan presented last week, government has allocated Rwf 85.6B to health services from the Rwf 240.7B planned for human development and social sector.