Africa-Press – Ghana. A project to promote access and generate demand for youth-friendly health services to help reduce maternal health complications and deaths in the Upper East and North East Regions has been launched in Bolgatanga.
The project dubbed, “shifting gender norms for improved maternal and adolescent health (SIMAH) in The Gambia and Ghana”, seeks to break gender imbalances and create enabling environment for young people to access youth friendly health services at healthcare facilities.
It was launched by the Youth Harvest Foundation Ghana (YHFG), a youth-focused advocacy organisation with a grant from International Development Research Centre Canada (IDRC).
The project comprised research and intervention components and would be implemented in 15 communities in Bawku West and Talensi Districts in the Upper East Region and West Mamprusi Municipality in the North East Region.
Mr Albert Akafari, the Project Manager, YHFG, said although efforts had been made to reduce maternal mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa, much attention had not been paid to promoting access to sexual and reproductive health services and the situation had resulted in high teenage pregnancy, sexual and gender-based violence, child marriages and unsafe abortion among others.
He said statistics from the Ghana Health Service indicated that in 2020, the country recorded 2,865 pregnancies among girls aged 10 to 14 and 107,023 pregnancies among girls aged 15 to 19.
Mr Akafari noted that unsafe abortion constituted about 12 per cent of maternal deaths recorded in Sub-Saharan Africa while in 2020, Ghana recorded about 200,000 abortions with 71 per cent being unsafe.
Child marriage in 2018 stood at 19 per cent in Ghana and 28 per cent in the Upper East Region he said and called for collective collaboration to address the phenomenon to improve maternal healthcare in the country.
He attributed the cause to some restrictive laws and policies and cultural norms and practices that impeded young people particularly women and girls from making informed choices regarding contraception.
He said, “the norms lead to negative attitudes from healthcare providers and this provider bias form an important barrier to realising youth-friendly services”.
Mr Albert Apotele Nyaaba, the Project Officer, said due to the social settings in most communities, many adolescents found it difficult to discuss their sexual life and access health services from the healthcare facilities to help them prevent teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases among others.
This, he said had over the years, led to an increase in maternal deaths recorded in the country, adding “some of these young people end up dying because their bodies are not well developed enough to give birth.”
To curb this, he said the project which employed the Gender Transformative Approach (GTA) and puts human rights issues at the centre of affairs sought to empower adolescents, especially girls to be assertive to demand sexual education on contraception and other reproductive health services from the healthcare facilities.
The Project Officer explained that apart training adolescent ambassadors in the project communities to champion adolescents’ issues, healthcare providers would also be trained to offer youth friendly health services to young people without prejudice or judgment.
In a speech read on his behalf, Mr Stephen Yakubu, the Upper East Regional Minister, noted that although efforts had been made, teenage pregnancy and child marriage remained a challenge in the region and appealed to stakeholders to support the project to succeed.
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