At Oyoko Methodist Senior High School (OMESS) in Koforidua, a boarding student gave birth to a baby boy in a dorm.
The sources say that some of her roommates said they heard a baby crying in the hallway of the hostel around dawn.
They went over to see what was going on, and they couldn’t believe that the student was carrying the baby with the intention of dumping it in a school bathroom.
They told the senior house mistress, and she rushed to the scene to take the mother and child to the Eastern Regional Hospital. They were checked in, but they have already been released.
Parents of the arts-one (1) kid have been notified by the administration of the school, and they have been requested to attend a meeting where a decision will be made for the benefit of the mother and the baby as a whole. The eastern area is seeing an ongoing rise in the number of incidents of teen pregnancy.
The situation became much more dire in 2020, when, as a result of the COVID-19 epidemic, schools were closed for almost an entire academic year.
According to information from the Ghana Health Service, there were more than 10,000 teen pregnancies in the Eastern region in the year 2021.
Because of this, certain preventative measures have been put into place, such as “back to school,” in which members of the Ghana Education Service travel to different villages to urge pregnant women and young moms to go back to school.
In the Akyemansa District, for example, the “Safe and Protective Environment for Adolescent Development (SPREAD)” project is being implemented in 40 rural communities in the district by Ark Development Organization (ADO), a non-governmental organization with support from UNICEF in partnership with Global Affairs Canada.
The goal of the project is to reduce the alarming rate of teenage pregnancy, help pregnant students and teen mothers return to school, and provide other related services.
A phrase that encourages people to improve their behavior in this respect is “Cross your leg; 100% cross your leg.” This slogan was created.
According to David Kwaning, the project officer for the Ark Development Organization, 89 of the 369 adolescent moms who were registered in the year 2020 have so far been recognized for support to go back to school, enrollment in an economic empowerment program, or enrollment in legal aid.
According to the data that was provided to us by the Ghana Education Service in the year 2020, there were around 369 adolescents who were already moms. Therefore, it is up to us to identify them and then provide assistance to them in the following three ways: Some of them need to go back to school; some need justice; and others need help with their health.
All of them need support. According to David Kwaning, the project officer, “so far we have been successful in identifying 89 of the adolescent moms.”
In the meantime, a non-governmental organization (NGO) is taking legal action against a man who used a vulnerable 12-year-old girl for child labor, defiled and impregnated her, and forced her to quit school after her father died.The girl’s father had recently passed away.
With only four months left before its conclusion, the project has successfully engaged 1,577 of the 2,000 targeted youths.
