Mr. Richard Kuunaah, the Executive Director of GHANECare, a non-governmental organization working to promote and protect the rights of women and children has said.

In an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) on a project the NGO was implementing in the Atebubu-Amantin District of the Brong-Ahafo Region, Mr. Kuunaah said two-thirds of unintended pregnancies in developing countries including Ghana occurred among women who were not using any method of contraception.

He indicated that more than 100 million married women in developing countries had an unmet need for contraception, adding that, five million women around the world were hospitalised annually for abortion-related complications.

Hemorrhage and Sepsis are the most common health complications, he said and added that, globally complications due to unsafe abortion procedures accounted for 13 per cent of maternal deaths.

The Executive Director said almost all abortion-related deaths occurred in developing countries and the highest is in Africa, adding that approximately 220,000 children worldwide lose their mothers every year from abortion related-deaths. 

Mr. Kunaah mentioned economic burden on public health systems, loss of productivity, stigma and long term health problems such as infertility as some additional consequences of unsafe abortion.

He said more than one-third of approximately 205 million pregnancies that occurred annually around the globe were unintended, adding that about 20 per cent of all the pregnancies ended in induced abortion.

Also out of the 23 million pregnancies that occurred in developed countries, more than 40 per cent of them are unintended, and 28 per cent ended in induced abortion, he added. Additionally, Mr. Kuunaah said the over 180 million pregnancies that occurred in developing countries, 33.3 per cent were unintended and 19 per cent ended in induced abortion, whilst eight per cent went through safe abortion and 11 per cent unsafe abortion.  

Touching on the project, Mr. Kuunaah explained the Mennion Daniels’s Limited under Amplify Change, a multilateral funding agency was supporting the one-year project expected to end by January 2018. Dubbed “increasing young people’s awareness on unsafe abortion”, the project aimed at deepening the understanding of young people on unsafe abortion and related complications to end the practice.

Mr. Kuunaah said the project had trained 40 young women between 14 and 25 years and they were tasked to undertake outreach programmes in the local communities to sensitise their peers on the dangers of unsafe abortion. They would also report cases of teenage pregnancies and illegal abortion practitioners in the communities.