A senior community health nurse at the Amamoma chips zone, Madam Gifty Addo is urging women and girls living in the Central Region who are in their fertile age to patronize family planning services as it will help save them from unintended pregnancies and its related issues.
According to her the surge in the number of young girls from 15 years and above giving birth is as a result of the unmet need for family planning and this she said is contributing to population growth in the Central Region.
The National Population Council of Ghana in press briefing to commemorate the world population day indicated that the unmet need for family planning as one of the factors for high levels of unintended pregnancies which are leading to an unsustainable growth in the population.
While stressing the need for much attention to be given to family planning in these times in an exclusive interview with ATL FM NEWS, she entreated the public to patronize family planning as it has a lot of benefits to the women, children and Ghana as a whole.
“Most of the communities are filled with these young women in the ages of fifteen to thirty-five years and most of them are in their fertile age, so we encourage them to come and do the family planning to help protect themselves from unsafe abortions”.
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She also encouraged those using family planning to report any concerns to the facilities or health persons they received the family planning services from. “If anyone encounter any problem after doing the family planning, I will prefer or I will encourage them to go to the health facility or the provider for them to be counselled or for them to seek help from them, she stated.
Madam Gifty Addo, highlighting the risk factors associated with the family planning, noted this exercise can delay child birth for a shorter period depending on the person.
“Some of the risk factors depend on the type of or the method the individual chooses and it delays in terms of fertility like coming back to your fertility period, sometimes it delays like three months. Some may wish to give birth right after stopping the family planning but it can delay you but some too just after two weeks they conceive so as I said it is individual differences”, she noted.
On creating awareness concerning family planning, she called on all media outlets to offer their platforms to help educate the public on the family planning exercise as well as health facilities holding outreach program and providing free services for first timers to help encourage young ones patronize the family planning exercise.
She further advised the you to either female or male condom as that will protect them from contracting Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs).
SOURCE: FLORA TANG/ATLFM NEWS