Adolescents not interested in abstinence – Service providers

Adolescence Health Providers in the Tema Metropolis say that most young people are no longer interested in the abstinence message.

According to them, adolescents who have already had sex were not willing to abstain making the abstinence preaching non effective.

One of the providers said “it looks like the abstinence preaching is not working as they prefer going for sex rather than abstaining. One of my clients who is about 16 years is carrying her second pregnancy even though we advised her to abstain after the first one”.

They revealed this on Wednesday during a day’s Adolescent Training programme for the providers, patrons of adolescent school clubs, Social Welfare and Community Development, media and the Domestic Violence Victim Support Unit (DOVVSU) of the Ghana Police Service.

Some of them blamed the development on the availability of family planning services to the adolescents aged between 10 and 19 years as most girls within the age bracket were on family planning.

Others, however, believed that putting such adolescent girls on family planning rather would help save their lives as some of without it many would end up pregnant and either resort to criminal abortions or end up giving birth to children they could not cater for.

Source: GNA