The Planned Parenthood Association of Ghana (PPAG) has increased sexual health education efforts in the country to combat unwanted pregnancies and improve maternal health to guarantee quality of life of women and girls.
The Association has since provided nearly 1.3 million family planning services in its programme year and rendered more than one million sexual reproductive health services to young people across the country as compared to 525,789 in 2013.
[contextly_sidebar id=”qs1IwyzY60nd6WBSM7e1B3V4JzqLMFwE”]President of PPAG, Joshua Opoku-Mainoo, disclosed this in a speech read on his behalf during the association’s annual general meeting held on the theme: “Empowering women for sustainable family life: PPAG in focus.”
More than 89,000 couples were also fully protected from getting pregnant during the year as against 64,306 in 213.
Mr Opoku-Mainoo said the PPAG implemented series of projects including one that focused on HIV and AIDS, offering services in HIV prevention to young people in 60 tertiary institutions covering about 90,000 students.
As part of the project, he said PPAG also extended services in HIV prevention and high-risk behaviours to prison inmates in 35 establishments, noting that: “the programme is contributing significantly to the health of our brothers and sisters in incarceration”.
He noted that through the interventions being put in place, hundreds of people are accessing quality sexual reproductive health services while young girls are equally empowered to seek and information and services they need about their sexual lives.
Mr Opoku-Mainoo expressed the hope that the organization would be able to overcome the challenges facing women and girls constituting more than half of the country’s population for sustainable family life.
“We would continue to work hard at issues such as reducing maternal mortality and morbidity, HIV and AIDS prevalence, adolescent pregnancies among others bedeviling women and girls,” he said.
The Acting Executive Director of PPAG, Albert Wuddah-Martey, said the association is committed to supporting women in their quest for improved quality life for sustainable families and national development.
“Our provision of family planning information and services has helped prevent countless unwanted pregnancies and by extension many maternal and morbidity,” he said.
He expressed regret that some men fail to appreciate the health of women when deciding the spacing and number of children to have.
“It is unfortunate that there are still some of our men folk who do not consider a woman’s health when deciding on the number of children to have,” he said.
Source: GNA