Health officials receive training on SRH

Representatives of the Tamale Metropolitan Health Directorate and its sub divisional health management teams including its local government officials have been trained on ways to ensure friendly sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services to young women.

The goal is to strengthen the tie between the Health Division and local government officials in the Metropolis and communities to support the process of ensuring a sustainable young women’s friendly SRH service delivery to empower them (young urban women) to have informed choices about their SRH.

The training was organised in Tamale by the Northern Sector Action on Awareness Center (NORSAAC) in collaboration with ActionAid Ghana, both NGOs, under “The Young Urban Woman: Life Choices and Livelihood” project with funding from the Norwegian Development Agency.

The project aims to empower 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 change in their own lives, their families, their communities and different levels of government.

Miss Kawusada Abubakari, Coordinator of the Young Urban Women Project of NORSAAC said “reproductive service provisions in our hospitals and clinics ranging from information, the service, the facility in which the service is delivered and the personnel delivering the services are notably poor.”

Ms Abubakari said “This lack of conscious efforts in providing young women friendly services is contributing towards increasing rates of sexually transmitted infections, teenage pregnancies, risky abortions, school drop-out, among others.”

She said in view of this the project worked to ensure that “Young women's informed choices about their sexual and reproductive health are increasingly realized.”

Ms Abubakari said a-20 member advocacy platform of the young urban women project had initiated discussions in the media to draw public attention to the issues.

She said the advocacy platform had also initiated the process of dialogue between it and Tamale Metropolitan Health Directorate and its Sub-divisional Health Management Teams (Vittin, Beilpela and Kpanvo), Tamale Metropolitan Assembly and its South Sub Metro Assembly and local government officials in the communities.

Madam Zankawa Munkaila, a Public Health Nurse from Tamale Metropolitan Health Directorate said despite the efforts, the metropolis continued to record high cases of maternal mortality.