The Central Regional Director with the Department of Gender Richlove Amamoo has called on parents to introduce children to sex education at the early stages of their lives to prevent them from being vulnerable and getting pregnant in their teens.
According to her, children are currently much more well-informed than their parents because of technology, hence the need for parents not to shy away from the necessity to empower their children with sex education
Data from the Ghana Health Service indicates that a total of 109,888 teenage pregnancies were recorded in 2020.
It also shows that nearly 301 girls were impregnated every day in Ghana while 13 teenage pregnancies were recorded every one hour.
Speaking in an interview on the ATLANTIC WAVE yesterday, Ms Amamoo said Sex education should no longer be a taboo subject in Ghanaian society because concealing sex education and sex knowledge from the youth makes them curious and vulnerable.
“The way we are, especially when we say we are staunch Christians, the perception is that our children are also the same but these children are adolescents. They are in a transitional stage where hormones become so active and sexual desires become very high. Instead of parents educating their children, they believe their children are not involved in early sex. This is causing a lot of harm in our communities. It is time they sensitize the children about their reproductive health” she stressed.
She also admonished parents to desist from shielding men that lure young girls to have early sex.
She indicated that “the parents prevent us from taking the men on. They say that when we jail the man there will be no one to take care of the child. The parents are not giving us the opportunity for the law to take its cause because a child below the age of 16 must not be involved in early sex. When parents are preventing us from doing our job, the problem cannot be solved”.
Source: ATLFMNEWSROOM
