GES unit steps up reproductive health education

The School Health Education Programme (SHEP) Unit of the Ghana Education Service (GES) has organised a youth camp to provide junior high school (JHS) students in the Brong-Ahafo Region with accurate information on reproductive health to help address teenage pregnancy.

Participants in the week-long programme, funded by the Department for International Development (DFID) of the United Kingdom (UK), were 135 students drawn from across the eight municipalities and 19 districts in the region. It was on the theme, “Building the future through positive adolescent reproductive health”.

The students were exposed to different environments to enable them to interact with their peers and role models and engage in other activities to help them to develop negotiation and decision-making skills, become more assertive and boost their self-esteem, to shape them into responsible adulthood.

Right choices

Addressing the closing ceremony in Sunyani, the Director of SHEP, Mrs Kate Opoku, asked the participants to make the right choices and avoid mistakes.

She said they should always seek information from the appropriate sources to prevent them from getting misinformed and misled to engage in premarital sex.

She spoke of the determination of the GES to create positive social attitudes and practices that would promote gender equity in terms of access to school, retention and performance.

Optimism

Mrs Opoku expressed the hope that the Ghana Adolescent Reproductive Health Project (GHARH), being implemented with support from an NGO in UK, Palladium Group, would significantly help to provide a safe and healthy school environment to increase not only access and retention of school children, but also raise the quality of education — GNA