The Wenchi municipality of the Bono Region has recorded 330 teenage pregnancies in the first six months of the year.
According to Robert Kwaku Bio, the Wenchi municipal director of health service, the issue of teenage pregnancy has been an age-old problem in the Bono Region.
In an interview with Asaase News, Bio said a total of 288 teenage pregnancies were recorded within the same period in 2021 while 313 cases of teenage pregnancies were recorded in 2020.
“Per the information we have at the directorate, 2020 we had 313 children who were pregnant [adolescent] which is teenage pregnancy and 2021 it came down to 288 and then 2022 it went up to 330, so which means there was additional 42 teenage pregnancy as far as the period under review is concern.”
Bio was worried about the situation and attributed the high rate of teenage pregnancies in the municipality to lack of parental care, irresponsible parenting and lack of communication between parents and children.
He said, “We are thinking of organising stakeholders meeting [to help curb the menace]. Parental care is lacking in most families and it is part of the issue because all these children are at school going age and once they are at school going age some necessities should be provided.”
“We know these adolescents every month have their period, do parents provide sanitary pads for them? These are some of the issues part from broken homes, peer pressure and the rest, most of we the parents are not responsible as we are supposed to be,” Bio said.
Robert Kwaku Bio called for all hands on deck to find a lasting solution to teenage pregnancy in the Wenchi Municipality.
