KUALA LUMPUR: The Health Ministry is optmistic that the death rate during childbirth can be reduced drastically based on the state-of-the art facilities and high expertise available at hospitals in the country now, said its minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai.
“With the use of the best technologies available, we have reduced deaths during childbirth but we have to ensure the number of deaths are reduced even further and I am confident this can be achieved.
“With more expertly trained staff including nurses, more women and babies can be saved besides cases of complicated births reduced,” he told reporters after opening Kuala Lumpur Hospital’s ‘Nurse Night’ event here Wednesday night.
He said the directors of all hospitals had been instructed to report to the ministry without delay if there were cases of deaths during childbirth.
He said the childbirth death rate for mothers at present was 29 cases for each 100,000 births while the infant mortality rate was six deaths per thousand babies born, rates that were considered stable for a growing country like Malaysia, which was showing marked improvement reducing childbirth deaths in the Asian region. –Bernama