MOH TO TRAIN MIDDLE-LEVEL HEALTHCARE PROVIDERS (PAGE 35)

THE Ministry of Health (MoH) is working closely with health training institutions and the Nurses and Midwives Council to train middle-level healthcare providers, including nurses and midwives, who far outnumber doctors and are also more accessible to most women to offer abortion-related services.
  The ministry will also work with other Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to address the special needs of the youth for comprehensive reproductive health information and services and to improve family services, including those available to women who have undergone abortion.
  The Minister of Health, Dr George Sipa-Adjah Yankey, disclosed this at the just ended sixth national delegates conference of the General Nurses Group (GNG) in Sunyani in the Brong Ahafo Region.
It was on the theme: “The role of the clinical nurse in comprehensive abortion care”.
“We need to educate women about the existing provision for legal abortion so that they can avail themselves of safe legal abortion to the full extent permitted by law,” he advised.
 The minister stated that the basic technologies for safe abortion care and contraception that had been available in rich countries for decades ought to reach every village in the country, adding “As a Minister of Health, I am ready to work with you to achieve this objective”.
He, however, said as professionals on the ground, “we will engage women everywhere to demand the sexual and reproductive healthcare they need and the compassionate treatment and respect they deserve and together, let us engage other stakeholders to work with women’s groups to ensure that all women know their legal rights and reproductive options”.
   Dr Yankey said the theme for the conference was significant since in the first place, it fell in line with the current direction of the health sector.
 The minister observed, “We are also aware that, an estimated, 20,000 women are hospitalised with abortion-related complications in the public health system alone each year, but some of us believe that this number can be higher, considering the number of abortions that occur in the country every year”.
Dr Yankey insisted that the statistics were difficult to compile due to the nature of the problem, adding that the vast majority of cases were done privately and sometimes criminally.
He also observed that nearly half of all those cases occurred among women aged between 14 and 24.
He said the problem had received inadequate attention and that, the pervasive denial of the reality of unsafe abortion was taking a huge toll on the health and lives of women and girls all over the country as well as on the public health system.
 The National Chairperson of the GNG-Ghana, Mrs Georgina Nortey stated that about 4.5 million women undergo unsafe abortion world-wide every year, adding that the age bracket of those prone to abortion was between 15 and 25 years.
    She said most unwanted pregnancies ended up as unsafe abortion because the primitive methods which were used in terminating those pregnancies, were dangerous.
 To reduce unsafe abortion, Mrs Nortey suggested that women should be educated on family planning and availability of comprehensive abortion care services, adding that there should be liberalisation of abortion law.
The Deputy Registrar of the Nurses and Midwives Council in charge of Indexing and Registration, Mrs Cecilia Kalitsi said in recent times there had been public outcry about the way patients and clients were treated by some nurses and midwives when they called at the hospitals and clinics for treatment.
 She cited some of the concerns as the impolite way the clients were welcomed to the health facilities, the insults rained on them when they were unable to provide certain vital information and the impatient manner in which prescriptions were explained to them.