Feature by Lydia Kukua Asamoah
Accra, Dec 18, -Thirty-seven year
old Abena Anokye who shared her story with a youth group at a church sometime
ago said by the time she was 19 years in the secondary school, she had aborted
five pregnancies, all, except one, through the hands of a quack doctor.
She narrated with much regret
that if she had access to contraceptive information and usage at that time, she
would not have gone through that “unfortunate and regretful ordeal” that have
made her infertile now that she was married to a much loveable husband.
She continued that her first
abortion at age 16 was done in collaboration with her mother and her boy
friend, who took her to a medical centre for it to be carried out.
Subsequently, her four other
abortions were done behind her mother’s back by a quack doctor with the consent
of her boyfriend.
“After my first experience,
nobody gave me any information on contraceptive use that will protect me from
getting pregnant, neither by my mother nor by the health professionals. My mom
just told me to be careful not to get myself in such a mess again.
“I don’t blame my mom at all
because those were the taboo days to talk about sex with children. Besides, I’m
sure my mom didn’t have any information to give me apart from cautioning me to
stay away from sex, which finally landed me in trouble,” Abena said
regrettably.
Abena, is therefore advising all
young people, especially, the adolescent girls to seek and look for information
on contraception to prevent unwanted pregnancies or better still, they should
as much as possible stay away from pre-marital sex until they were ready to
take responsibilities of their lives in their advanced ages.
But all of society’s adults know
how the adolescence stage is critical and delicate, especially when one is
exposed to the wrong environment, the wrong friends, and with less information
and access, and restrictive right to reproductive health services.
Reproductive health relates to
the ability of women or girls to control their own fertility which is
fundamental to women’s empowerment and equality.
When a woman can plan her family,
she can plan the rest of her life. Protecting and promoting her reproductive
rights – including the right to decide the number, timing and spacing of her
children – is essential to ensuring her freedom to participate more fully and
equally in society.
A universal right, including
reproductive health right, is the one that applies to everyone, everywhere,
regardless of income, ethnicity and place of residence or any other
characteristics.
Therefore, failure to provide
information, services and conditions to help the adolescent girl protect their
reproductive health constitutes gender-based discrimination and is a violation
of women’s rights to health and life.
However, the reality was that,
today, across the developing countries, and in Ghana as well, reproductive
health right was far from being universally realised, with hundred millions of
women and girls still struggling to obtain information, services and supplies
to either prevent pregnancy or to give birth, the State of the World Population
2017 Report has revealed.
“Whether a woman is able to
exercise her reproductive rights depends in part on whether she lives in a city
or a rural area, how much education she has and whether she is affluent or
poor,” says the report.
The report, launched in Accra
recently by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), has indicated that an
educated woman in an affluent household in a city for instance, was likely to
have access to a full range of modern contraceptive choices, to have the power
to decide whether, when, and how often to become pregnant, and if she chose to
become pregnant, to give birth safely in a hospital or a clinic under the care
of a health professional.
The 136-page Report, titled:
“World Apart: Reproductive, Health and Rights in an age of inequality”, has
noted that comparatively, a poor woman with little education in a rural setting
was likely to have few options for preventing pregnancies, staying healthy
during the pregnancy or delivering with the assistance of a skilled birth
attendants.
And in seeking to exercise her
reproductive rights, she may face social and institutional obstacles that her
affluent and educated counterparts may never encounter or may easily
overcome.
The report said inequalities in
sexual and reproductive health correlated with economic inequality and that
within most developing countries today, access to critical sexual and
reproductive health care was generally lowest among the poorest 20 per cent of
households, and the highest among the richest 20 per cent.
One measure of access to sexual
and reproductive health services was the extent to which a woman or a girl who
wanted to use modern method of contraception services had access to it.
Access to family planning
services had also been noted as a fundamental element, not just of reproductive
health, but of social and economic equality, since unintended pregnancies
constrained opportunities that girls and women would otherwise have had for
education, civic participation and economic advancement.
The World Report indicated that
in the developing countries, 12.8 million adolescent girls have an unmet demand
for family planning, while 43 per cent of pregnancies were unplanned.
Besides, adolescents, especially
those who were not married or in a union, face more obstacles than adults in
obtaining contraceptives because of restrictive laws and policies, concerns
about confidentiality or stigma associated with sex at an early age.
In many parts of the developing
world, adolescent girls are often forced into marriage, usually to men much
older than themselves, of which the age difference alone could mean that such
girls have less power in decisions about conceptive use.
A UNFPA report indicated that in
2015 there were estimated 14.5 million births to adolescents in 156 developing
countries, territories and other areas, which was a recipe for higher
complications and maternal death as well as a major cause of school dropout
rate.
The adolescent girls typically
have less access to contraception than adolescent boys, because of the
discriminate prevailing attitudes about what is acceptable behaviour for girls.
Again, adolescents face
additional reproductive risks because they have less access than adults to
services, particularly, contraception and HIV prevention, and the girls are at
greater risk than the boys.
Also regrettably, each year in
the developing countries, 89 million unintended pregnancies were recorded, 48
million abortions were carried out, 10 million miscarriages occurred, with a
million stillbirths recorded according to the report.
Girls under age 15 accounted for
1.1 million of the 7.3 million births among adolescent girls under age 18 every
year in developing countries while 95 per cent of the world’s births to
adolescents occurred in developing countries, with nine in 10 births occurring
within marriage or a union.
Meanwhile, for both physiological
and social reasons, women were more vulnerable than men to reproductive health
problems, since collectively, complications of pregnancy or childbirth were the
number two killer of women of reproductive age.
Thankfully, the UNFPA is working
with countries to respond to the needs of the most marginalized and vulnerable
– including adolescent girls, people living with disabilities, indigenous
peoples, disabilities, indigenous peoples, migrants, women refugees, female
heads of households and those living in extreme poverty.
The 2017 world report therefore,
emphasised on the requirement to meet all unmet needs for family planning by
prioritising women in the poorest 40 per cent of households; reach the poorest
women with essential, life-saving antenatal and maternal health care.
It called on nations to tear down
barriers that prevented adolescent girls and young women from accessing sexual
and reproductive health information and services.
It also promised a universal
social protection floored by offering basic income security and cover essential
services, including maternity-related benefits and supports.
Speaking at the launching of the
World Report, Mr O.B Amoah, a Deputy Minister of Local Government and Rural
Development, said there was the need for governments to acknowledge the
benefits of improved sexual reproductive health and work towards achieving the
goals.
He said in Ghana, the sector
Ministry had been working on programmes aimed at improving sexual reproductive
health, especially maternal mortality at the district and regional levels.
Mr Amoah, therefore, called on
the need to eliminate all manner of socio-cultural barriers, that mitigated
against women and girls in the society.
Mr. Niyi Ojuolape, the Country
Representative of UNFPA Ghana, said it was regrettable that the world continued
to remain unequal, and that inequality was not only about money, but human
rights, happiness, sexual reproductive health and childcare.
Also, African Parliamentarians
who recently attended the International Conference of the Network of African
Parliamentary Committees of Health in Uganda called on governments to allocate
more resources to reproductive health and family planning programmes.
Among other things, the
legislators also resolved to support the drive against early marriages and
teenage pregnancy and to advocate for initiatives to keep the girl-child in
school.
In their draft resolutions termed
“Kampala Call for Action”, adopted after the two-day conference, the
legislators agreed to participate in monitoring and evaluating reproductive
health and family planning programmes.
They also noted that reproductive
health and family planning programmes remained critically important for
sustainable development of the African continent.
“It is essential to continue
positioning reproductive health and family planning programmes high on the
continent’s development agenda,” the resolution stated.
Aside these calls, there is also
the need for governments, particularly,
the Government of Ghana, to support laws and policies that operationalise task
sharing for improved service delivery of reproductive health and family
planning programmes for the adolescent girl.
The Government must also
collaborate with the legislature, judiciary, development partners, the civil
society partners, and health care professionals, to work towards ensuring
access to sexual and reproductive health care for the adolescent girls in
school and out of school.
That will ensure that, the
adolescent girl is well informed to take the right decisions, and make the best
life choices, thereby increasing her ability to stay in school, increase her
production and earnings, increase her autonomy and self esteem, as well as
increase equity for her.
GNA
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