13-year-old Girl Kept 5 Sexual Partners, As....

...School girls engage in promiscuity to raise money - NGO

Denu, Oct. 18, GNA - Some sexually active basic schoolgirls in the Ketu District are engaging in promiscuity to raise money to cater for their needs, Pro-Link, a reproductive health non-governmental organisation has discovered.

The organisation said it heard from a 13-year-old primary five girl that she kept five sexual partners at the same period to enable her mobilise funds for her up-keep.

Mr Samuel Saitey, Co-ordinator of Pro-Link, said this at the second in a series of stakeholders meetings on sexual reproductive health of women and HIV/AIDS disease on Friday at Denu in the Ketu district. The meeting attended by teachers, assembly-members, health workers and artisans was to create the platform at the grassroots level for sharing ideas on sexual reproductive health of women and the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

It identified the obstacles against promoting the reproductive health women such as sexually transmitted diseases, teenage pregnancy, crude abortion methods and the control of men in the decision of sex. The meeting also formulated proposals and identified interventions such as the need to give women a voice in such issues, sex education and adequate parental care for adolescents at the local levels to address the problem.

Mr Saitey said while parents avoided sex and HIV/AIDS discussions with under-aged children, such children between eight and 16 years often approached Pro-Link teams for sex related education.

He said, the spate of teenage pregnancies, rape and crude abortion cases were on the increase in the community as a direct result of parents shirking their responsibility of educating their children on sex-related matters.
Most often, the community is also ignorant about sexually reproductive issues, he added.

Mrs Eugenia Obodai, President of Pro-Link said it was important that reproductive issues of women were improved and the HIV/AIDS scourge brought down "so that we can have a healthy society". Participants called for the banning of wake keeping at funerals, which they said have become grounds for indiscriminate sex by the youth.