About 25.7 percent of pregnancies registered for antenatal for the half-year in the Sherigu community, a suburb of the Bolgatanga Municipality in the Upper East region were teenage pregnancies.
The Sumbrungu sub-municipality zone of the Ghana Health Service also recorded 22 percent of teenage pregnancies out of the total number of pregnancies recorded for the half-year of 2021.
Bolgatanga Municipal Health Director, Edmund Nyanwura Nellie disclosed this exclusively to A1 Radio said “the Sherigu and the Sumbrungu communities are the most rural in the municipality that is why the cases of teenage pregnancies are increasing there”.
Mr. Nyanwura stated that even though teenage pregnancies in the entire municipality saw an increase from 11 percent last year to 12 percent in the first half-year of 2021, the figures at the sub-municipal zones such as Sherigu and Sumbrungu is alarming.
The municipal health director has therefore called for concerted efforts at changing the trend.
Mr. Nyanwura also called for the need to make family planning services accessible to teenagers to reduce the rate of teenage pregnancies in the municipality.
“Teenage pregnancy means an unintended pregnancy and persons may come to antenatal to register to keep the pregnancy, though many did not intend to get pregnant. What we can use to prevent unintended pregnancies are the unmet needs. If we don’t make family planning commodities for whoever doesn’t want to get pregnant, then we will be fighting a lost battle”.
Out of the 38 demarcated Community-based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) zones in the municipality, the health director said just 14 have compounds while some are in a dilapidated state which are not habitable.
“Like Azorebisi for instance, the health workers cannot stay in there and that is one of the challenges. Once they are rehabilitated, the staff will stay in and offer their services at any given time”.
Mr. Nyanwura who lauded the idea to allow pregnant teenagers to stay in school, advocated for midwives to be assigned to take proper care of the mother and baby.
Source: A1Radioonline.com|101.1Mhz|Joshua Asaah
