Abeadze Dominase records low family planning use
The patronage of family planning services is still a major challenge in the Mfantseman Municipality of the Central Region.
Ms. Gifty Kissi, a senior midwife at the Biriwa Health Centre, raised the concern at a Community Engagement and Advocacy meeting.
It was organised by the Ghana Health Service (GHS) at Abeadze Dominase to demystify the misconceptions and some of the outmoded socio-cultural barriers that militate against the use of family planning services in the Municipality.
The meeting, which formed part of the interventions being put in place by the Mfantseman Health Directorate to reduce maternal mortality and teenage pregnancy, was also to empower women to access and obtain appropriate information on contraceptives and birth spacing methods.
She said though family planning was one of the most cost-effective interventions available to save lives and improve the health of mothers and children, many women were adamant to accept it while teen pregnancy continued to increase in the Community.
Much more attention needed to be paid to adolescent girls between the ages of 15 and 19 to reduce early childbearing, a cause of maternal death, as the group, she said, had the highest unmet needs for family planning.
Couples, she said, must plan and decide on the number of children they could responsibly cater for and consider the consequences of inadequate spacing of births and having too many children.
“Child bearing should be a choice and not by chance,” she explained.
Ms. Kissi said low education, and traditional and cultural beliefs were major hindrances to the efforts by the GHS in tackling family planning.
She, therefore, urged the chiefs to help create an enabling environment for change and build on the existing structures to strengthen family planning education.
Madam Muniratu Yaya, a retired midwife and a facilitator of the programme, said much work must be done to galvanise local stakeholders to support the poorest and the most isolated women, in their desire to plan their families and deliver their children safely.
She said it was evidenced that if couples kept pregnancies more than two years apart, more maternal deaths and child deaths would be prevented.
“High fertility is strongly associated with child mortality because children born 18 months or fewer months after the birth of a previous sibling will have three times the chance of dying than one born after three years’ interval,” she explained.
She said the Health Directorate was determined to close the family planning gap and accelerate efforts on maternal and child survival and health.
Madam Yaya urged stakeholders in the health sector to continue to push on the entire key factors, such as ensuring girls’ and improving access to skilled birth attendance.
Source: GNA