An obstetrician gynaecologist at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital has described unprotected sex and unintended pregnancy as career destructive agents and dream killers.
He says girls need to be guided and encouraged to delay their first sexual experience to enable them prepare adequately for their future. Dr Ernest Puni Kwarko was speaking at a mentoring and coaching seminar for girls in senior high schools in Kumasi.
The seminar attracted about five hundred female senior high students from various schools.
Dr Kwarko stated, “Young girls need mentoring to prepare them properly into adulthood.
These girls must be encouraged to develop their skills and careers to make them economically independent”.
He noted delayed sexual experience and pregnancy reduce the risk of cervical cancer, hence the need to educate the girl on adolescent sexual and reproductive health.
“Young girls must be made to understand that part of their normal physiology is to crave for sex and if not careful there can be an accidental unprotected pregnancy.
So we have to mentor and encourage them and give them all the tit bits about how to delay their first sexual experience” Dr Kwarko explained that “if girls are able to delay their first sexual experience, it reduces their chances of getting cervical cancer”.
The President of the Ghana-US Department of State Alumni Association, Nana Yaa Appiah, said girls should be given the opportunity to make informed decisions and develop through mentoring and coaching.
“Young girls must be afforded the opportunity to develop their potentials in order to be independent and contribute towards societal growth. Women need to be encouraged to make decisions for themselves and overlook certain underlined subcultures that draws them backward”.
Nana Yaa Appiah said the mentorship programme will be extended to all senior high schools across the country. The seminar, which was organised by Ghana-US Department of State Alumni Association, was to assist the girls to identify their strength, improve their thinking patterns, remove limiting beliefs, and to clarify their goals and purpose in life.