By Tabora Bojang
Health Minister Dr Ahmad Lamin Samateh yesterday admitted there was an “arithmetic error” in the 2025 maternal mortality ratio he provided to the National Assembly in March, saying the officers responsible for providing him this inaccurate information have been reprimanded.
During his appearance yesterday the minister said the figure he gave the Assembly was “inaccurate” and that his ministry had immediately reached out to the Clerk to notify the Assembly about it.
“The individual who provided that information used the institutional maternal mortality variable as the total maternal mortality ratio which is smaller and instead of using the total maternal mortality variable which is the larger, he came out with a result that was documented showing 128 maternal deaths or so and that was given to me as minister which I presented in Assembly and it happened to be erroneous,” Minister Samateh lamented.
He added that to avert that sort of thing, and since he himself knows the calculation, he had to do the calculation before coming to the Assembly this time round.
“That is not the desired system where the minister had to calculate these things and present it to the National Assembly him or herself. So we are dealing with it. The official and the entire team were reprimanded for creating that. We told them that such action is unacceptable,” the minister revealed.
According to him, the error occurred during the data retrieval process from the DHIS2 Platform leading to “inadvertent presentation of the institutional maternal mortality ratio” as the total maternal mortality ratio.
Minister Samateh went on to provide what he calls “the correct maternal statistics” for 2025 as follows: “Total number of maternal deaths-30, number of life births 80,720, institutional maternal deaths-104, institutional maternal mortality ratio 128.8 per 161,000 life births and the total maternal mortality ratio 116.1 per 100,000 life births.”
He assured lawmakers that he personally had to conduct a calculation to verify this latest statistics before presenting it to the Assembly.
