Kanton Salifu Yussif, executive director of the Community Development Alliance (CDA-GHANA) has raised concerns over the escalating rates of teenage pregnancy in the country.
The recent release of the 2023 Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) report unveiled a troubling statistics: nearly one in every four girls aged 15 to 19 in Ghana has experienced pregnancy.
Speaking on the Big Bulletin with Caleb Ahinakwah on Tuesday (13 February) Yussif highlighted the profound impact of teenage pregnancy on Ghana’s social and economic landscape, noting a significant dropout rate among adolescent girls beyond Junior High School (JHS) education.
Despite achieving near gender parity in basic education, the prevalence of teenage pregnancy poses a severe setback to the advancement of young women, ultimately hindering the nation’s developmental goals.
“At the lower levels, we actually have more female enrollment, but because of this incident of teenage pregnancy, defilement that ends up putting girls in the family way, majority of our girls drop out along the line. So we are losing a critical age group that was needed to propel the development and growth of our country. So we really need to redouble efforts in this area.”
Drawing from extensive research conducted by CDA-GHANA, Yussif said one of the factors contributing to teenage pregnancy is the lack of adequate parental guidance, particularly prevalent in Northern Ghana.
“One of the key issues is parenting. We have observed across, particularly in Northern Ghana, that many girls do not get the required parental guidance that is needed.”
“There are many of them who are not living with their parents; many of them are single mothers who have also left them to grandmothers who basically do not have control over them because they cannot even provide their food and other necessities,” Yussif stated.
Yussif underscored the gravity of the situation, pointing out the significant proportion of adolescent pregnancies resulting in complications during childbirth, including fatalities.
The data gathered from hospital deliveries reflects a distressing reality, with a notable percentage attributed to children giving birth themselves, highlighting the urgent need for comprehensive intervention strategies.
“We are close to between 15% and 20% of most deliveries recorded now in our health facilities are children giving back to children, and a number of them run into serious complications of delivery, some of them leading to fatalities.”
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