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The Upper East Regional Director of the National Youth Authority (NYA), Mr Francis Takyi-Koranteng, has bemoaned the increasing rate of pregnancy among girls between the ages of 10 and 19 in the region.

The region is currently placed seventh on the table of regions with the highest number of pregnancy among teenagers in 2020, with 6,533 cases.

Mr Takyi-Koranteng said pregnancy among teenagers and school dropout figures for the first quarter of 2021 exceeded that of 2020 by 14.5 per cent, saying “this means a lot is wrong out there".

Mr Takyi-Koranteng made the revelation when he addressed a day's Review Meeting for 50 sexual and reproductive health rights (SRHR) advocates at Bolgatanga.

The participants were selected from six beneficiary districts — Builsa South, Kassena Nankana West, Bongo, Talensi, Nabdam and Bawku West Districts — in the region.

The meeting was organised by the NYA and the Upper East Regional Coordinating Council under the Government of Ghana and United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Country Programme for 2018-2022 (CP7).

Awareness creation

Mr Takyi-Koranteng said “as SRHR advocates, you should focus on sharing the knowledge you acquire on the interventions with your colleagues; collaborate with health workers and community leaders in your various localities to intensify information dissemination and provision of SRHR services to the adolescents”.

He observed that even though most young girls saw formal education and skills training “as the best bets to giving themselves a bright future, prevailing circumstances like poverty, love for material things, overhyping of nudity and sex-related materials on social media continued to make sex a normal thing among young people”.

He noted that the COVID-19 pandemic had also brought untold hardships upon many households as a result of restrictions and job losses among other issues, and that the end result of all these was that “our future is in limbo".

“It could get stagnant or elude us as teenage pregnancy, young single mother issues and unwarranted sex-related deaths are taking our world like harmattan fire," he further lamented.

He, therefore, proposed the formation of positive influence clubs to enhance awareness creation and information sharing among the adolescents and the SRHR advocates.

Alarming figures

A midwife at the Public Health Unit of the Bolgatanga Municipal Health Directorate, Miss Mary Azika, pointed out that figures showed that a lot more needed to be done in the beneficiary districts of the SRHR advocacy programmes.

She said during the first quarter of 2021, Bawku West District recorded 207 cases of teenage pregnancies, while the Talensi (162), Bongo (150), Kassena Nankana West (120), Builsa South (68), and Nabdam (63) added to the numbers.