By Priscilla Oye Ofori
Accra, Oct. 22, GNA – Dr Leticia Adelaide Appiah, Executive Director, National Population Council (NPC), has called for more education on reproductive health.
That, she said was essential for a country’s development, hinged on population health, education and skill development.
Dr Appiah made the call during a workshop to engage the media on population issues.
The workshop was aimed at sensitising the media to be ambassadors of reporting and dissemination of population and development issues.
Dr Appiah said reproductive health improved over all nutritional status of citizens—bridges fertility differential, resulting in the bridging of the ratio of “rich people accumulating human capital stock and poor people accumulating children.”
She said it also reduced population growth, “leaving no one behind”, and improved skilled labour force.
The Executive Director attributed high morbidity at birth to unhealthy mothers prior to pregnancy leading to poor outcomes at high costs.
“… 48.7 per cent of births not in optimal state, too close, too early, too late and too many (MHS 2017). We want women to get pregnant when they are healthiest for optimal outcome of baby and mother,” she said.
Dr Appiah said prioritising pre conception care would move people from illness to a wellness paradigm.
Teenage pregnancies in Ghana, she said, had hit 555,575 in five years according to the Ghana Health Service District Health Information Management.
“A system that is indifferent to who become parents or to how parents treat their children has forgotten that the unit of nation building is the family, the cornerstone is the child.
“Hungry, poorly educated in huge numbers, poorly housed, low productivity and anaemic in values is a system we have created by design of default,” the Executive Director said.
She underscored the need for a national health care system that truly prioritised prevention valued by policy makers and tax payers.
Dr Appiah said high population growth rate above two per cent hindered efforts to raise income in families and countries with high birth rates and young structure.
That, the Executive Director said created economic insecurities mainly in high fertility households, which encouraged them to have large families, “poverty trap”.
She said poverty and lack of economic opportunities increased incentive to exploit natural resources leading to environmental degradation.
The NPC is the highest statutory body tasked to advice government on all population related issues.
It’s vision is to provide improved and sustained quality of life for Ghanaians through effective management of population and its related issues.
GNA