HEROESNEWSGH The Biggest Gh News Platform
The Old Tafo-Pankrono Municipal Health Directorate in the Ashanti region has outlined measures to reduce teenage pregnancy and premature parenting among young people in the municipality.
Speaking at a half year Health Performance Review held at the Municipal Health Directorate at Pankrono on Thursday, the Municipal Director of Health Services, Madam Faustina Osei Mensah disclosed that, the Directorate has established adolescent health corner at Tafo government hospital which will provide adolescent-friendly space where adolescents and young people can ask questions on sex and offer referral services.
Ms Faustina Osei Mensah further said that the directorate in collaboration with the Assembly members, various health facilities in the municipality and other health stakeholders are also embarking on house to house sensitization on sex education among the adolescent and young people.
Adolescent and Teen pregnancies have increased at a high rate over the years
according to the Ghana Health Service (GHS), between 2016 and 2020 more than half a million Ghanaian girls aged 10 to 19 years became pregnant. That is an average of over 111,000 teen pregnancies per year. Of all the teen pregnancies during this period, over 13,400 involved girls between the ages of 10 and 14.
The establishment of the Adolescent Health Corner project will improve capacity of the unit to provide adolescent-friendly space where adolescents and young people can visit, ask questions on sex, offer referral services and provide convenient visiting hours, privacy and confidentiality for adolescents to be open minded to ask all the questions that are eating them up without fear or intimidation and get them talking about their daily struggles.
The project also will maintains database of adolescent friendly facilities in the municipality and contact numbers of nurses, doctors and health professionals who will be contacted when necessary to assist on sexual and reproductive health services.
The Adolescent Peer Educators shall also be trained in each schools to help raise awareness, implement edutainment activities and sports events to empower and stimulate youngsters to make conscious choices about sexual health and pregnancies.
The Health Director however appealed to authorities to consider the long abandoned state of Pankrono health center and provide facelift to it to help reduce the choked and also absorb some of the over crowded patients at the Tafo hospital.
The half year health performance review saw major various health stakeholders in the municipality such as Nananom, government officials, Zongo Communities and owners of private health facilities.
In an interview, the Chief Executive Officer CEO, of Trinity hospital, Dr Emmanuel Obeng commended the health directorate, stating that health indicators in the municipality have relatively improved especially with the acceptability of family planning by the people which at the end will reduce and control premature parenting and births.
He worried not only over the ratio of one doctor to thousands of patients but also the arrears of health insurance fund as it is a major challenge facing all the health facilities most especially the private hospitals and charged the government to do something about it.
reporting for heroesghnews, Rexkin Ohene Boateng hello fm Kumasi.
