Poor Maternal and Child Health in Tanzania amidst Plenty: Review from Tanzania’s Grand Corruption Scandals from 2005-2015

Abstract

: Maternal and Child Health (MCH) in Tanzania like other Sub Saharan African countries is in a gloomy state. The country has failed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDG). Sadly, maternal mortality rate (MMR) stand at 454 per 100,000 against MDG target of 133 per 100,000. Similarly, under five mortality rates (U5MR) stand at 81 per 1000 against MDG target of 19 per 1000.The government’s efforts to address MCH problems have not been successful mainly due to funds lost through grand corruption. The paper argues that the lost amount of money through grand corruption scandals could have been used to fix poor maternal and child health problems in Tanzania if it were invested in the MCH policy and programmes. Instead, the MCH policy and programmes are marred by several problems including continued dwindling of human resource for health, increase of petty corruption in the MCH sector, declining of MCH budget that gravely impact on availability of medicine and medical supplies. Other impacts of grand corruption to MCH include declining motivation to health workers and overall poor quality health care that impact community trust of the health system. The paper is of the view that fighting grand corruption can result into improving MCH policy programmes. This will be made possible if unwavering efforts will be exerted toward the said problems such as instilling ethical behaviour, strengthening anti-corruption agencies and imposing harsh penalties to grand corruption perpetrators