By Emmanuel Nyatsikor
Adaklu Waya (V/R), Dec 2, GNA – Some 13.1 per cent of women, who access healthcare in the Adaklu district from January to November, this year are teenagers.
Mrs Antoinette Alorwu, Adaklu District Public Health Officer who disclosed this, said this was due to factors including poor parenting, poverty and social vices.
She made the disclosure at a day workshop organized by the Adaklu District National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) on promoting adolescent health and gender equality and empowerment at Adaklu Waya in the Adaklu district.
It was attended by representatives of hair and dressmakers’ associations, drivers and okada riders’ unions, the security services, traditional and religious leaders, market women and Civil Society Organisations.
It was funded by the United Nations Development Programme.
Mrs Alorwu intimated that sadly their investigations revealed that 45 percent of such teenage pregnant girls did not even know the names of the men who impregnated them.
She stated that these girls would give birth to children who would be less privileged than them, adding “sadly poverty will become a generational curse and endemic in those families.”
She also lamented that such girls were also anaemic and malnourished due to lack of proper care and urged parents to give them the right nutritional foods at the right time to enable their brains to function properly.
The Public Health Officer advised parents to “go back to the drawing board and do not allow social media to dictate to your children.”
She stated that parenting was an art and not merely providing children with food and their basic needs and urged parents to help their children regulate their feelings.
Mrs Alorwu noted that the adolescent stage was very crucial in a person’s life as it was the stage at which children respond to what their hormones told them to do.
She told adolescents to have reasons for having sex and plans for the outcomes of their actions.
Mrs Alorwu urged tradional and religious leaders to be in the forefront in the fight against teenage pregnancy.
Mr Nicholas Asamani, Adaklu District Director of NCCE advised the participants to become peer educators in their various communities and unions and report all rape and defilement cases to the law enforcement agencies.
GNA
Edited by Maxwell Awumah /Kenneth Odeng Adade