From Alfred Adams
The fourth Family Planning Week celebration in Ghana is to be launched in Takoradi on September 25, this year, with the theme “It’s your life; it’s your future; plan it well.”
The celebration seeks to increase public awareness and acceptance of family planning, and to advocate increased commitment to family planning as an essential component of national health and socio-economic development.
The goal of the programme is to assist couples and individuals of all ages to achieve their reproductive goals, and improve their general reproductive health, through information and counselling on contraception and other reproductive health services.
Dr. Kofi Asemanyi-Mensah, Deputy Western Regional Director of Public Health, announced this at a press briefing in Takoradi.
He explained that the objective of family planning is to assist couples to inform, educate, and counsel individuals, to enable them decide freely and responsibly the number of and spacing of their children.
He said it is also to prevent and manage reproductive tract infections, including sexually transmitted infections and HIV/AIDS.
He said, since 1970s, Ghana has been pushing the agenda of family planning, and that despite the almost universal knowledge of family planning, over 90 percent practice of contraception remains low.
According to him, the impact of population growth on the development of a nation is critical, noting that the growth of the population should be in tune with economic growth to enable development take place.
Again, he pointed out that the health of the population is vital, especially, their sexual and reproductive health information and services to have a healthy nation.
He further said there is the need to invest in family programmes that enable individuals and couples have the ability to decide better the number of children they want to have, when to have them, and stop when they wish.
“Without support for family planning, the achievement made in the total fertility rate of Ghana will be lost, as evident in the current reduction in [the] contraceptive prevalence rate,” he said.