Public Agenda (Accra)
Patricia Ofori Atta
3 August 2007
Accra — The President's Special Adviser on Reproductive Health, Professor Fredrick Torgbor Sai has urged parents not to shy away from discussing sex with their children because it is part of the entire human reproductive process.
"Reproductive health includes sex and must be a subject for our children both at school or at home," he said.
Professor Sai said this at the launch of the Ipas Ghana Country Office in Accra.
Ipas is a global organisation dedicated to improving women's lives by focusing on reproductive health in order to halt the many preventable deaths and injuries that women in developing countries endure due to unsafe abortion.
He stated that there is an "underground virus" which is killing women in Africa, and that is unsafe abortion, which he said must not be allowed to occur.
According to him, 40 percent of women die globally from unsafe abortion annually, a trend which political and religious leaders must fight.
A Representative from Ghana Health Service, Dr. Glory Asare said 68000 women in the world die yearly because of unsafe abortion and it is about time the society fought it.
According to Dr. Asare, Ghana has a high maternal mortality rate and must curb it to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
"We have to work hard to meet the challenges of maternal mortality in the country," he stated.
A Ghana Health Service Survey in 2006 revealed that maternal mortality has increased in all public sector institutions under the Ghana Health Service.
In 2006, there was a 100 percent auditing and reporting of maternal deaths from all public sector institutions in the regions as well as the participating private facilities.
According to GHS, out of the 27 mothers whose deaths were reported at the Tema General Hospital, one died on arrival, and 10 died in less than 24 hours after arrival.
GHS said that, six were due to hemorrhage and two were pregnancy induced hypertension, while one was cardiac arrest and anemia.
According to GHS, sixteen mothers spent more than 24 hours in the hospital before they died; three of them were as a result of hemorrhage, three were also pregnancy induced hypertension, whiles five were as a cause of septicemia, three from cardiac arrest, one was due to post operative sickling and acute renal failure.
Dr. Asare advised that if a woman wants to have an abortion she should have it done at the hospital legally but not to use any herbal medicine.
"A woman would have to be given the chance to do whatever she pleases whether to have an abortion or whatsoever," Dr. Asare stated.
According to her, the GHS enacted new reproductive health policy in 2003 to improve women's access to abortion services by legally trained doctors and midwives.
"There is a policy on reproductive health which was reviewed in 2003 and included unsafe abortion in order to save abortion," she stated.
The Country Director of Ipas Ghana, Dr. Jeho Appiah, said in Ghana women who die as a result of unsafe abortions sadly account for up to 40 percent of total maternal mortality according to WHO data, despite the liberalization of national abortion laws in 1985.
Dr. Appiah stated that the organization's mission is to reduce maternal mortality and morbidity rate and expand the availability of safe women centered abortion in the country.
He said the World Health Organisation survey in 2006 reviewed that over four million abortions occur in Africa alone accounting for 40 percent of maternal mortality deaths among women from these dangerous procedures.
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