The Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) has recorded a significant drop in maternal deaths, a development the hospital’s management says marks its first major turning point in a decade in efforts to protect the lives of pregnant women in the Ashanti Region.
Between January and June 2026, the hospital recorded 55 institutional maternal deaths, down from 78 over the same period last year, a reduction of 23 deaths that ends nearly ten years of rising or stagnant figures at the facility.
Chief Executive Officer of the hospital, Dr Paa Kwesi Baidoo, announced the figures at the opening of the hospital’s 2026 Mid-year Performance Review Conference in Kumasi.
“We recorded a welcome reduction in institutional maternal deaths from 78 at mid-year 2025 to 55 in the corresponding period in 2026,” he said.
Dr Baidoo credited the improvement partly to the hospital’s new Maternal Intensive Care Unit, set up with support from anaesthesia and intensive care specialists. The unit has capacity for eight beds, though only four are currently in use, and Dr Baidoo said fully activating it could drive the numbers down further.
“No woman should die,” he stressed, describing the reduction as the first in the hospital’s maternal mortality record in about ten years.
In a related development, KATH has completed an Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) Centre, which is expected to begin operating this month.
Dr Baidoo said it would make KATH the first public health facility in Ghana with a fully-equipped specialist fertility centre, part of a broader push to widen access to specialised care.
