The Food and Drugs Authority is raising concerns over what it has seen to be the growing trend of most young girls in Ghana abusing contraceptive pills.
Research conducted by DKT International show that most of the young women who abuse these contraceptive pills suffer from mild to severe side effects from high blood pressure and even death in most cases.
“One month they will take it three times. They have serious issues with their periods. That’s what they normally come to me for education on what to do. They haven’t received any education and they refuse to read the leaflet,” a woman who dispenses drugs at a pharmacy, Joyce Kyeremateng Abebrese, revealed.
Greater Accra regional health director, Dr Linda Van Otoo, says most of the unsafe abortions were from young and unmarried ladies who got pregnant through unsafe sex.
Cases of abortions are recorded to have shot up in Ghana over the last five years as figures from the Ghana Health Service show the spread in the number of quack doctors continues to pose a grave threat to the reproductive health of the female population. As it stands now, unsafe abortions are strictly frowned upon in Ghana and also considered a criminal offence punishable by law.
It is based on this fierce warning that most young ladies decide to go into hiding to commit the offence.
Unfortunately, the rise in unsafe abortions has culminated to it’s exposed risks on Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) and also HIV.
