The Oti Regional Health Directorate (ORHD), has expressed concern about the increasing number of unsafe abortion cases in the region, and called for cooperation from stakeholders to prevent the occurrence.
According to personnel of the directorate, About 1,000 young women were identified to practice unsafe abortions in 2021, Senior Midwifery Officer (SMO) of the Oti Regional Health Directorate, Ms Bernice Tendrago has revealed.
They were aged between 10 and 36 years respectively.
According her, the regional health directorate had put in place measures to help reduce and subsequently prevent deaths that occurred through unsafe abortion.
Ms Bernice Tendrago made these known on Tuesday at Nkonya-Ahenkro during a public education programme on the need for women to visit health facilities to seek professional advice, whenever they wanted to abort their pregnancies.
She stressed that the increasing number of maternal death, as a result of unsafe abortion in the region should be a matter of concern to all.
Ms Tendrago, said teenagers and women should be bold enough to visit hospitals and declared their intentions of aborting their pregnancies, when necessary because the laws of the country permitted lawful abortion and health professionals were prepared to help ensure safe abortion after careful examination of the situation.
According to her, the ORHD had discovered that teenage girls and women resorted to the use of unapproved herbal medicines, grinded bottles and harmful drugs to terminate their pregnancies, which at the end resulted in deaths that could be prevented.
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She said, the increasing number of maternal death through unsafe abortion made the ORHD to intensify education on antenatal and safe abortion practice, whenever it became necessary for women and teenage girls to terminate pregnancy.
Ms Tendrago, explained that it was an offense for women to engage in unsafe abortion because the laws of the country prohibited it, therefore those who provided the insecure abortion and the pregnant women were all culprits, and cautioned women and their culprits to stop the illegal practice because when caught, they would be prosecuted.
She further, explained that health workers had the responsibility to offer counselling services to women, who would wish to abort their pregnancies and in the process, many of them saw the need to keep the pregnancy, and those who still saw abortion as important to them would be assisted to have safe abortion.
A Regional Public Health Nurse, Mrs Veronica Kakah, said it was important for parents to appreciate the need to educate their children on reproductive health, to enable them to understand the fact that sex was preserve for married couples.
