The Volta Regional Director of the National Youth Authority (NYA), Mr Yao Semorde, has stressed the need for municipal and district assemblies to involve young people in the decision-making process to ensure that their needs are included in the development plans of the assemblies.
Mr Semorde said it was crucial for the assemblies to, at all times, ensure that the development needs of the future leaders of the country were identified and addressed to tackle current challenges confronting their growth.
The Volta Regional Director of the NYA was speaking at a one-day inception and stakeholders' meeting organised by the Volta Regional Secretariat of the NYA on the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and NYA Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health and Youth Engagement Centre (YEC) programme at Adidome in the Central Tongu District of the Volta Region.
Mr Semorde explained that the Youth Engagement Centre would serve as an advisory centre on reproductive health and counselling on issues bordering on youth development, with a professional nurse and a counsellor.
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According to him, young people lacked access to information that would guide them in making informed decisions, including on their reproductive health, to reduce teenage pregnancies and other challenges they faced.
Mr Semorde was hopeful that the Youth Engagement Centre would provide young people with relevant information to enable them to face the future with confidence.
A Public Health Officer at the Central Tongu District Health Directorate, Mrs Melody Enam Bodi, lauded the NYA and UNICEF activities, which she said would definitely address the information needs of adolescents, particularly on reproductive health-related issues, and reduce teenage pregnancy and gender-based violence in the area.
Mrs Bodi expressed concern about the increasing number of teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection (STI) cases in the district, saying the NYA and UNICEF interventions would help reduce such cases in the area.
She disclosed that from January 2026 to the end of August, 188 teenage pregnancies were recorded, compared with the 306 cases recorded in 2025, while 26 STI cases were recorded during the same period, as against 26 STIs recorded in 2025, indicating an increasing trend of infections.
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Mrs Bodi said the records of teenage pregnancy cases and STIs should be a matter of concern to stakeholders, considering the fact that the figures represented only those who visited the five health facilities in the district.
She urged the youth to regularly visit health facilities for early diagnosis and treatment and provide care for teenagers who became pregnant, and assured them that health professionals were committed to providing quality services to them.
