School girls use contraceptives

 
School girls in the Asikuma-Odoben-Brakwa District in the Central Region have turned to the use of contraceptives to prevent them from becoming pregnant.

These students, most of whom are in the basic schools (aged from 10 years and above), are using birth control measures to avoid teenage pregnancy.

Stakeholders meeting
This came up during a stakeholders meeting on teenage pregnancy. It was organised by the Member of Parliament for the Asikuma Odoben Brakwa, Mrs Georgina Nkrumah Aboah.

The district currently leads in teenage pregnancy cases in the region and the workshop was aimed at sensitising the participants to the need to join hands to help reduce the menace.

The meeting was attended by officials of the Ghana Education Service (GES), traditional leaders, Social Welfare Department, Ghana Health Service (GHS) and non-governmental organisations focused on girl-child education, among others.

The District Girl Child Education Officer, Madam Sakina Dadzie, who disclosed this, said some of the basic school girls she had interacted with were using some of the contraceptives in order not to get pregnant, which would force them out of school.

She noted that most of the parents had shirked their parental responsibilities towards their female children, which had pushed the girls onto the street—with its attendant problems.

Ms Dadzie called for concerted efforts from stakeholders to tackle teenage pregnacy in the district in order not to lead to a mass exodus of female students from the classroom.

Other stakeholders
The Country Director of Ipas, Dr Koma S. Jehu-Appiah, said the absence of education on sexuality during adolescence was a major contributory factor to teenage pregnancy. He added that sexual feelings were natural and it would, therefore, take constant sexual education to help manage it.

He called on the Ghana Education Service to strengthen the counselling departments in basic schools so that the counsellors would educate female students about the emotional changes they would go through as adolescents.

 The second in command at the District Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit (DOVVSU) of the Ghana Police Service (GPS), Detective Corporal Vincent Arhin, appealed to the public to allow institutions to work and put a stop to the culture of trooping to their outfit to plead for suspects alleged to have sexually abused teenagers.

The MP, Mrs Nkrumah Aboah, explained that teenage pregnancy was contributing to population explosion in the country, with the district leading in the Central Region.

She added that the meeting was to provide a platform for the participants to team up to help reduce teenage pregnancy in the district.

The District Chief Executive for the Asikuma Odoben Brakwa District, Mr Samuel Adom Botchway, noted that teenage pregnancy could persist in the district so long as parents refused to perform their parental roles.

He appealed to parents to effectively monitor their daughters so that unscrupulous men in the society would not make a prey of them.