Abena Adubea Amoah
The Planned Parenthood Association of Ghana (PPAG) has held a media engagement session to expose practitioners to the services and resources the organisation offers to the public.
The media, during the day’s open session, toured the organisation’s clinic which offers Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) services including family planning methods, the youth center and the ‘Yenkasa’ contact center which serves as a one stop online and virtual counseling center.
PPAG Country Director, Abena Adubea Amoah, took the media on the journey of the organisation which started in 1967 in Accra and later spreading through volunteers’ regional branches by 1970.
She said PPAG leveraged on information, education, communication and outreach work with support from the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) Funded Integrated Family Planning Services (IFPS) in its formative years to drive home its activities.
Madam Amoah said building upon the experience acquired from the initial programmes and projects, the association initiated new projects, including Male Motivation Integrated Family Planning, Nutrition, and Parasite Control Project (IP), Use of Community Based Distribution (CBD) Agents and Community Health Educators (CHEs) for SRH activities, establishment and operation of youth centers, and provision of RH services to the youth in underserved areas.
“The formative years as well as the period of consolidation, saw the association focusing more on adults. During the mid-1990s, the need to meet the sexual and reproductive health needs of adolescents emerged as a key concern for national development,” she added.
PPAG, she said, thus initiated a 3-year transformation exercise (2000-2002) to change its focus from the provision of family planning services for adults to a broad perspective of sexual and reproductive health targeted at young people 10-24 years.
She indicated that the new shift received overwhelming public response with morethan 5,000 calls made to the newly established telephone helpline, and clients also increased at the service delivery points approximately reaching 800,000 youth with 280,000 being served at clinical points within the period.
She said currently, the PPAG is implementing programmes and projects which border on adolescent empowerment, ending child marriage, sexual and gender-based violence, comprehensive abortion care, family planning, prevention of teenage pregnancy, sexual and reproductive health services, reproductive health education for in-school and out-of-school.
“1,878044, SRHR services has been provided including 1,077,916 family planning services, 144,751 STI services, 130,473 HIV and AIDS services, 524,904 other services and 1,020,183 SHR services to the youth,” she said.
She further noted that 2,976,533 contraceptive items have been distributed with 1,090535 people reached through social media.
Madam Amoah thus urged the media to partner the organisation in order to reach its vision where all people in Ghana, especially the young population, and vulnerable groups, have unhindered access to and utilize Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) information and services.
By Jamila Akweley Okertchiri