Media personnel sensitised on dangers of abortion

Tamale, May 16, GNA - A doctor has appealed to journalists to use the media to educate the public on the dangers associated with unsafe abortion.

Dr Barnabas Bamaaha Gandau, a gynaecologist at the Tamale Teaching Hospital, who said this at a one-day media sensitisation on the dangers of unsafe abortion also called on pregnant women to seek medical advice on complicated pregnancies. Pathfinders International, an advocacy non-governmental organisation operating in the Northern Region involved in raising awareness on Comprehensive Abortion Care (CAC) and assisting in finding solutions to them, organised the programme. It was aimed at sensitising the media on how to use the airwaves and newspapers to educate the public particularly pregnant women to seek professional advice from medical doctors to ensure that their complicated abortions were aborted safely. Dr Gandau, a lecturer at the University for Development Studies (UDS) Medical School, said over 30 per cent of pregnancy related deaths and childbirth was due to abortion and that more than 30 per cent of those who had unsafe abortion would remain sterile. Dr. Gandau said the media have tools to reform society and stressed the need for compressive education for women to regularly visit health facilities to report their health complications to prevent deaths.

"A woman who has decided to abort will do it anywhere, anytime, by any means and at all cost even at the peril of her life. Very few women will rescind the idea to abort and even then, until they deliver, the idea is never over", Dr Gandau said.

He said many people were not patronising the abstinence theory and that "People are neither abstaining from sex nor abortion" and therefore stressed the need for stakeholders to join the debate on the legality of abortion to help save lives. Dr Gandau said some women got pregnant under pressure, others after pleasure and many needed to live through sex adding, "Unfortunately, the most affected ones are the youth." He said most of the time doctors were called upon to attend to women whose request to abort were denied and attributed the problem to infiltration of fake doctors in the system. Dr Gandau said the Ghana Health Service (GHS) in collaboration with Pathfinder International were training midwives in the region to manage abortion and post-abortion complications since there were few qualified doctors in the region.