9,100 teens get pregnant in Ashanti in six months

By Gifty Amofa, GNA,
Kumasi, Aug 02, GNA - A total of 9,100 adolescents reportedly got pregnant in the Ashanti Region during the first half of this year.

Mr. Simeon Kwabena Acheampong, the Regional Manager of Marie Stopes International, Ghana, an international NGO, providing contraception and safe abortion services, said three teenage pregnancy related deaths were also recorded during the period.

Nationwide, 57,000 teenage pregnancies with 31 deaths, were seen.

He was speaking at a three-day adolescents' camp meeting organized jointly by the Ghana Health Service (GHS) and the Ghana Education Service (GES) in Kumasi.

It brought together members of the adolescent health ambassadors clubs in senior high schools (SHS) across the country.

These ambassadors are being supported to create awareness on reproductive health in both their schools and communities as part of stepped up effort to prevent unwanted pregnancies.

The meeting was held under the theme 'Equipping young people as health ambassadors for sustainable development'.

Mr. Acheampong expressed concern about the high rate at which many a young girl were getting pregnant and dropping out of school.

This, he indicated, was unhelpful to the fight to reduce poverty and asked that all combined their effort to give protection to adolescent girls.

Dr. Gloria J. Quansah Asare, the Deputy Director General of GHS, labeled the youth as valuable asset and said everything should be done to help them to avoid missteps and pitfalls.

He spoke of the need to reach out to them with reproductive health services to make the right choices and decisions.

Statistics show that majority of the Ghanaian adolescents are in school and she said that made the school a critical platform for providing adolescent and youth-friendly health services.

That, she indicated, informed the decision by the GHS to form the clubs to get to them, with the right health information and services.

GNA