Osun identifies poor parenting for increase in teenage pregnancies

Osun identifies poor parenting for increase in teenage pregnancies

Osun State Commissioner for Health, Dr Rafiu Issamotu on Thursday noted that many sexually active young girls got pregnant prematurely due to lack of self care and poor parenting.

The commissioner who said this while speaking at a seminar organised by the Federal Ministry of Public Health Department in Osogbo, assured that the state government was committed to ensuring the spread of the message of self care delivery considering its capacity to help in taming uncontrolled pregnancies and childbirth among young girls.

He reasoned further that “many sexually active young girls got pregnant prematurely with high tendency to procure illegal abortion which might result in mortality, while others who eventually were delivered of the babies lack the psychological and material requirements of raising a child, thereby resulting in poorly raised individuals who become a menace to the society.”

Also speaking, the Director of Reproductive Health, at the Federal Ministry of Health, Dr Kayode Afolabi explained that the self care delivery was a new innovation to enable women attend to their health by themselves, without requiring the services of any health care provider.

Represented by a Deputy Director of Reproduction Health, Mrs Remi Bajomo, Afolabi stressed that states and local governments have enormous responsibilities to ensure that the message of national guidelines on self care was taken to the rural areas where people with limited literacy reside.

In his own remark, the  the country coordinator of John Show Incorporated, one of the partners, Dr Adewale Adefalu explained that the self injection of DMPA-SC, one of the self care products, provided women of reproductive age the choice of three additional months of contraceptive coverage while removing the barriers associated with facility -based care such as cost, access, and stigma.