Fourteen teenage girls from the ages of 10 to 14 got pregnant in the Sunyani Municipality in 2016, Mrs Sarah Agyepong, a public health nurse at the Sunyani Municipal Hospital disclosed on Tuesday.
She expressed regret that despite intensified public education, teenagers had failed to attend and rather opted for family planning services.
Speaking at a stakeholders meeting on sexual productive health project in Sunyani, Mrs Agyepong said the municipality had recorded seven teenage pregnancies within the same age group in the first quarter of the year.
The Global Media Foundation, an anti-corruption media advocacy non-govermental organisation organised the meeting in line with its 12- month project being funded by AmplifyChange, a multi-lateral donor agency in the United Kingdom.
Dubbed ‘increasing young people’s participation in the review of the adolescent reproductive health policy-Ghana’, the project is being implemented in Northern, Brong-Ahafo, Upper East and Upper West Regions at the cost of 10,000 euros.
Mrs Agyepong pleaded with the Ghana Education Service to strengthen sex and family planning education in basic schools as teenage boys and girls were often engaged in active sex.
Mr Owusu Asante, the Sunyani West District Adolescent Health Coordinator observed that neglect of young ones in the formulation of policies and programmes on reproductive health was a serious impediment to controlling teenage pregnancies.
According to reports from the Ghana Health Service, the country recorded about 110,000 teenage pregnancies in 2016.
Mr Asante was uncomfortable that though reproductive health services were available to the young people, reports on teenage pregnancy, unsafe abortion and sexually transmitted infections kept increasing.
“This is because we as a nation have failed to actively engage young people in sexual reproductive health issues”, he added.
Mr Raphael Godlove Ahenu, the Chief Executive Officer of GLOMEF, observed that many young people were denied sex education as a basic human right.
He explained that the project would organise youth conferences, develop position papers to help incorporate the views of the adolescent in policy formulation and implementation and appealed to all stakeholders especially the GES, the Ghana Health Service and traditional authorities in the project implementing areas to support and make the project achieve its objectives.
source: GNA