Sunyani, April 11, GNA – Fourteen girls aged between 10-14 years got pregnant in the Sunyani Municipality in 2016, Mrs Sarah Agyepong, a Public Health Nurse, at the Sunyani Municipal Hospital said on Tuesday.
Speaking at a stakeholders meeting on a sexual productive health project in Sunyani, Mrs Agyepong said the Municipality had recorded seven teenage pregnancies within the same age group in the first quarter of the year.
She expressed regret that despite intensified public education, teenagers had failed to opt for family planning services.
The Global Media Foundation, an anti-corruption media advocacy non-govermental organisation, organised the meeting in line with its 12 month project being funded by AmplifyChange, a multi-lateral donor agency in the United Kingdom.
Dubbed; “Increasing Young People’s Participation in the Review of the Adolescent Reproductive Health Policy – Ghana,” the project is being implemented in the Northern, Brong-Ahafo, Upper East and Upper West regions at a cost of 10,000 Euros.
Mrs Agyepong pleaded with the Ghana Education Service (GES) to strengthen family planning education in basic schools because the boys and girls were seriously engaged in active sex.
Mr Owusu Asante, the Sunyani West District Adolescent Health Coordinator, said neglect of young people in the formulation of policies on reproductive health was a serious impediment to controlling teenage pregnancies.
According to reports from the Ghana Health Service (GHS), the country recorded about 110,000 teenage pregnancies in 2016.
Mr Asante said though reproductive health services were easily available to the young people, reports on teenage pregnancy, unsafe abortion and sexually transmitted infections kept increasing.
‘This is because we, as a nation, have failed to actively engage young people in sexual reproductive health issues,’ he said.
Mr Raphael Godlove Ahenu, the Chief Executive Officer of GLOMEF, observed that many young people were denied sex education, as a basic human right.
He said the project would organise youth conferences and develop position papers to help incorporate the views of adolescents in policy formulation and implementation.
Mr Ahenu appealed to all stakeholders in the project implementing areas, especially the GES, GHS and traditional authorities, to support and help the project achieve its objectives.
GNA
