CHIEF ADVISES YOUTH AGAINST UNSAFE ABORTION (PAGE 11)

Story: Rose Hayford Darko, Tema

Tema Manhean is a fishing community in the Tema Metropolis, which has a large number of school dropouts.
Child welfare groups in the community have observed that some of the young boys and girls who drop out of school resort to promiscuous lifestyles leading to teenage pregnancy and other anti-social vices.
According to the Tema Mantse, Nii Adjei Krakue II, the increasing rate of unsafe abortion in the Manhean community is of great concern to the traditional authority because the lives of women and girls are endangered.
He said reports from health care facilities indicated that some girls and women in the area used concoctions and other unorthodox means to abort unwanted pregnancies, which sometimes resulted in the loss of lives.
Nii Krakue therefore urged parents to take keen interest in the lifestyle of their children and give them family life education to protect their future.
He also appealed to health officials, women leaders and churches to intensify education on the dangers associated with unsafe abortion to help deal with the issue.
He gave the advice at a forum organised at Tema Manhean by the Metropolitan Youth Rehabilitation Organisation (MYRO), a non-governmental organisation, to enlighten the youth on the risk and consequence of illegal abortion.
Nii Krakue urged the organisers to sustain the programme and appealed to women in Manhean to form formidable groups and collaborate with the MYRO to organise such programmes regularly.
The Chief Executive of MYRO, Madam Sena Akua Apawu-Bri, said although the country’s laws permitted abortion to be performed under certain conditions, some churches had taken an entrenched position against abortions and said there was the need to create awareness on safe abortion to save the lives of women and girls.
She pointed out that it was unfortunate that some parents felt uncomfortable to enlighten their children on adolescent sexuality and added that there was the need for such parents to change their attitude for the betterment of their children.
Madam Apawu-Bri said within the framework of the World Heath Organisation’s (WHO) definition, health was the complete physical, mental and social well-being of the human being and meeting the reproductive health needs of women implied that women should be able to have responsible, satisfying and safe sex life.
She commended women leaders in Tema Manhean for taking up the challenge to embark on sensitisation programmes to enlighten the youth on issues related to their reproductive health.
The Country Director of Ipas, Dr Jehu Appiah, advocated the legalisation of abortion to save the lives of women and girls.
He said since 1985, the country's law on abortion had allowed pregnancy to be terminated if that pregnancy was the result of rape, incest, threat of foetus and mental disability.
Dr Appiah said the law had not been publicised enough, raising deaths of women from unsafe abortion from 22 to 30 per cent.
Records from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) indicate that unsafe abortion causes 70,000 deaths in Ghana every year, while Ghana has a maternal mortality rate of 540 deaths per every 100,000 births.