FAMILY PLANNING: LOW COVERAGE MAY DRAW GHANA BACK FROM MDGs FINISH LINE

FAMILY PLANNING: LOW COVERAGE MAY DRAW GHANA BACK FROM MDGs FINISH LINE

Edward Adeti’s Report, Bolga, Upper East, Ghana.

Dr. John Koku Awoonor-Williams

The Upper East Regional Director of Health Services, Dr. John Koku Awoonor-Williams, has warned that Ghana might at last find herself far behind the 2015 finish line of the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on maternal deaths due to low family planning coverage.

He says Ghana can only actualise the goal in 2015, like the other well-performing countries, by doing effective skipping and tackling of certain hurdles which include unfavourable cultural practices, apathy, inadequate service personnel, lack of access to health facilities, ignorance, shortage of devices, high cost in deprived communities and unavailability of family planning services in some areas.

The Regional Director was speaking in a speech read on his behalf by Mr. Emmanuel Ayire, a Public Health Nursing Officer, at a durbar at Sokabisi, a suburb of Bolgatanga. It was organised by the Ghana Health Service (GHS) with sponsorship from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) to climax this year’s Family Planning Week Celebration in the Bolgatanga Municipality. The celebration, which took place concurrently in the Talensi-Nabdam District, was themed: “Contraceptives; Your Right to Accurate Information.”

“In order to deal with maternal deaths, we need to strengthen efforts aimed at improving family planning coverage which at the moment stands at 15%. This means that the unmet need for family planning is 85%. If we are to address maternal mortality in this region, then, we have to vigorously tackle the unmet need for family planning in the region,” Dr. Awoonor-Williams underscored.

Updates from the Regional Director on maternal death situation in the region pegged the region with 27 maternal deaths in 2008, 32 in 2009 and 34 in 2010. He pointed out that the region’s maternal death picture was worsened by unsafe abortions among adolescents who encountered unplanned pregnancies from unprotected sex. Five out of the thirty-two maternal deaths recorded in 2009 were due to unsafe abortion, according to his report.

Among the 203, 984 pregnant individuals who were registered under the Ante Natal Care (ANC) between 2006 and 2010 in the region, 29,793 were teenagers.

He observed that teenagers who were attached to such harmful factors as peer pressure, rebelliousness, selfishness and lack of quality parental relationships (too authoritative or too permissive) invariably were driven into unplanned pregnancies and, subsequently, unsafe abortion and its grim complications and grave implications. The Regional Director listed death as well as such reproductive scars as infertility and deformities as the inevitable results of unsafe abortion.

He noted that pregnancy-carrying teenagers were students who lacked the physical and psychological wherewithal to bear the pregnancies as well as such parenting skills as smiling, touching or verbally communicating with the children to raise socially acceptable youths. Whilst urging women in leadership to take up the issues of teenage pregnancy seriously, Dr. Awoonor-Williams also called for companionship and counseling for all young people in the region. He stressed that the region already was too overloaded with poverty, disease and mortality that it could not afford to include the burdensome implications of teenage pregnancy.

“We need to reduce teenage pregnancies in the region to the barest minimum. Getting pregnant at this age can be life-threatening because the girl is not mature physically and psychologically. Mortality rates are four times higher for a pregnant teenager than for women aged between 25 and 29 years. The unborn child is at risk, too,” he stated.

Miss Joyce Bagina, Bolgatanga Municipal Director of Health, unveiling the family planning picture of the municipality, said only 25 out of every 100 women in 2008 showed practical interest in how their families should be planned. The figure dropped to 20 in 2009 and rose to 21 in 2010. She said among the unconcerned 75% of the women were individuals who, after getting unintended pregnancies from unprotected sex, rushed to drug stores and herbalists to terminate the pregnancies without recourse to the Reproductive and Child Health Unit.

She announced that services were available for those who wanted to have sex without developing pregnancy, adding that the assumption that family planning methods affected the couple and contaminated the breast milk was false. As some men are said to view family planning as encouraging wives to cheat on their husbands, Miss Bagina said the issue of infidelity in marriage had nothing to with family planning services but the sheer absence of morality and mutual trust.  

“All we want to see henceforth is the men enthusiastically accompanying their wives to the family planning centres to enjoy the peace and happiness that family planning has to offer,” the Municipal Director entreated.  

The durbar, which saw a thrilling drama on family planning enacted by the Red Cross Mothers, also afforded the community members the opportunity to know the actual prices of the family planning devices. Reports are rife that some health staff and private peddlers turn away poor and family-planning-seeking people by charging them inflated prices for the devices, thereby exposing them to needless reproductive complications.  

It was announced at the durbar that the devices including depo provera and norigynon should be sold at 50 pesewas each whilst the male condom (3 pieces), the female condom and jadelle were supposed to be sold at 10 pesewas, 30 pesewas and Gh¢2.00 respectively. Also in attendance were Miss Victoria Navro, a veteran Public Health Nurse, and Mr. James Adongaga, a veteran educationist, who chaired the event.