By Laudia Sawer
Tema, Sept. 27, GNA – Dr Sally Quartey, Director of Health Services, Tema Metropolitan Health Directorate, says the Metropolis recorded a decline in teenage pregnancies in the year 2021.
Dr Quartey noted that a total of 471 teenage pregnancies were seen at the ante-natal clinics of the various health institutions in the Metropolis compared to the 502 documented in 2020.
She disclosed this at a forum on child marriage organised by the Greater Accra Regional Gender Department, Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection.
Giving a breakdown of the figure, Dr Quartey stated that 457 were aged between 15 and 19 while 14 of them were within the age range10 to 14.
She said the data currently available at the Directorate indicated that there were 222 teenage pregnancies as of the middle of September 2022, adding that the figure was an indication that the figure would significantly drop by the end of the year compared with that of 2021.
Dr Quartey called on parents to encourage their children to join the adolescent clubs in their schools as well as visit the adolescent corners in the public health institutions and the community to learn about their developmental stage and how to handle issues associated with it.
She said the World Health Organisation defined an adolescent as any person between the ages of 10 and 19 years, adding that it was the transitional phase of growth and development between childhood and adulthood.
She stated that it was a unique stage of human development and an important time for laying the foundations of good health, adding that during that stage, they experience rapid physical, cognitive and psychosocial growth which affected how they feel, think, make decisions, and interact with the world around them.
Touching on early marriage, she said it was a formal or informal union between a child under the age of 18 and an adult or another child, indicating that such marriages threatened the lives, well-being, and futures of girls involved.
Dr Quartey noted that some of the health implications of child marriage were the increased risk for sexually transmitted diseases, cervical cancer, pregnancy-related complications, death during childbirth, and obstetric fistula, as well as malaria complications in pregnancy due to weakened immune systems.
Madam Matilda Banfro, the Greater Accra Regional Director, Department of Gender, said the forum’s main purpose was to engage identifiable groups on the negative impacts of child marriage.
Madam Banfro said it was also to equip the stakeholders with the understanding and the need to prevent child marriages in their respective communities.
She indicated that through such dialogues and actions, the prevalence rate of child marriage in the Greater Accra Region was currently eight percent from the previous years of eleven per cent.
GNA