Sexually active 14-year-olds go on family planning to check rising pregnancies

Health officials at Pokrom in the Akuapem South Dis­trict of the Eastern Region have now resorted to family planning methods as the panacea to controlling the ris­ing trend of teenage pregnancy among girls aged between 14 to 16 years in the farming community.

According to the Senior Staff Midwife at Pokrom Health Center, Wendylove Ofori, 15 school girls aged between 14 and 16 years un­derwent jadelle method of family planning to protect them from un­wanted pregnancies since they admit­tedly pointed out that they could not abstain from pre-marital sex.

Teenage pregnancy has been on the upward surge in the community forc­ing the health officials to develop various strategies to help curb the phenomenon.

One of such strategies by the Pokrom Health Officials was the for­mation of adolescent clubs to edu­cate the teenagers on adolescent re­productive health; however, the men­ace continues to increase.

She said, in 2014, a total of 71 teenage pregnancies were recorded in the community with some hav­ing safe delivery while about 15 had their pregnancies terminated on health grounds.

According to Madam Ofori, the situation can be attributed to irresponsible parenting and extreme level of poverty in the community, which have forced many young girls to depend on young men in the community for survival, which results in their be­ing pregnant.

The Senior Midwife stressed that, a lot of reproductive health educa­tion programmes have been rolled out to help reduce the menace.

In the interim how­ever, parents are be­ing encouraged to advise their chil­dren, who are reluctant to abstain from sexual intercourse, to patron­ize family planning in which 15 young girls were subjected to jadelle method.

Madam Wendylove Ofori also mentioned that, the support of tra­ditional leaders, opinion leaders and Churches in the community have been solicited to help reduce the in­cident of teenage pregnancies being recorded.

She appealed for the support of Non-Governmental Organizations and philanthropists to support their adolescent clubs to ensure its sustainability.

She also appealed for replacement of its defunct generator that broke down years ago to help in their work effectively in the evening since they resort to the use of torchlight when­ever there is power outage in the community in delivering service to their clients despite the threat of snakes and scorpions in the environ­ment.

Pokrom is predominantly a pine­apple growing farming community in the Akuapem South District with a population of over 12,000 people.