Health centres provide friendly SRH services

Some health management teams under the Tamale Metropolitan Health Directorate have instituted measures to provide friendly sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services to young urban women.

The health management teams include Beilpela Health Centre and Vittin Health Centre.

This followed a training they underwent in November last year, under the “Young Urban Woman: Life Choices and Livelihood Project” to increase the technical capacity of the health personnel on services to young women.

“The Young Urban Woman: Life Choices and Livelihood” project is being implemented in the Tamale Metropolis by the Northern Sector Action on Awareness Centre (NORSAAC), in collaboration with ActionAid Ghana, both NGOs, with funding from the Norwegian Development Agency.

It aims at empowering 2,000 young urban women from 15 to 25 years in Accra and Tamale to have safe and decent work and livelihoods to be able to exercise greater control over their income, including being empowered and supported by allies and responsible stakeholders to effect changes in their own lives, their families and their communities.

Speaking at a workshop in Tamale to review the progress of the project since its inception in November, Madam Awabu Iddrisu, Midwife at Beilpela Health Centre in Tamale, said the facility was providing counseling services on sexually transmitted infections to young urban women to enable them to lead healthy lifestyles.

Madam Iddrisu said young women, who become pregnant, but do not want to have a child, were also reporting for assistance and were being referred to qualified facilities to abort the pregnancies.

She said other young women also sought education on SRH services.

Madam Cecilia Mahama, Midwife at Vittin Health Centre, said the facility had trained five young urban women as community health volunteers, who provide education to adolescents as well as helped to address their challenges, related to SRH issues.

Miss Kawusada Abubakari, Coordinator of the Young Urban Woman: Life Choices and Livelihood project of NORSAAC, urged the health management teams to intensify the education and make their institutions friendly to young women to improve their access to SRH services.