Mary Alosum, the Bolgatanga Municipal Girl Child Coordinator for the Ghana Education Service (GES) is encouraging parents to have extensive educational conversations about sex, reproductive health organs and systems with their children.
This will arm the children with adequate knowledge about early sex and its effects. The general aim of these conversations would also be to reduce teenage pregnancies among teenagers.
She said this while speaking at A1 Radio’s round table discussion on teenage pregnancies and stakeholders’ efforts at managing the social menace.
His comments followed earlier ones that were made that suggested that parents in the various communities had failed to properly train their children; the reason teenage pregnancies persisted despite the many interventions by Catholic Health Services, Ghana Health Service, CSOs, NGOs, Religious and Traditional leaders et al.
“Parents have a lot to do. We have to help our children. You know, some parents do not like mentioning the vagina but a vagina is a vagina. It would always remain what it is. If you tell the girl that if she allows a boy to put his penis inside her vagina, she will get pregnant, she would be mindful. It is all about talking. Let us continue to talk.”
“Unfortunately, that is what we parents do not like doing. Some of us are feeling shy because you do not want to say vagina in front of your daughter,” she said.
She also encouraged parents to have conversations about teenage pregnancies and their effects on girls with their sons as well. So that they realize that their actions can derail the lives of young girls.
Background
The round table discussion was occasioned by a feature, Trapped on the Motherhood Web, written and produced by A1 Radio’s Moses Apiah with support from the Youth Harvest Foundation.
A survey by the Ghana Health Service (GHS) indicated that between 2016 and 2020 more than half a million Ghanaian girls aged 10 to 19 years were pregnant. The figure indicates that an average of over 111,000 teen pregnancies are recorded per year.
In the Upper East Region, statistics from the Service also indicated that in 2020 a total of 6,533 cases of teenage pregnancies were recorded. In 2021, the Catholic Health Service of the Navrongo-Bolgatanga Diocesan Development Organisation also recorded over 5,000 teenage pregnancies within 10 months. The Bolgatanga Municipality recorded 11 percent of teenage pregnancies in 2020. This increased to 12 percent in the first half of the year 2021. The Sherigu Health facility recorded 25.7 percent of the overall figure while the Sumbrungu Health Centre recorded 22 percent of teenage pregnancies.
Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Mark Kwasi Ahumah Smith|Ghana
