Dr. Kwabena Sarpong, Municipal Director of Health Services of Upper Denkyira East, on Thursday, bemoaned the widespread abuse of “cutotec”, a drug used in controlling bleeding after delivery, by some teenage and adolescent girls in the area to abort unwanted pregnancies.
According to him, but for the vigilance of experienced nurses in a health facility in the Municipality, three girls who used the drug to abort pregnancies last year would have lost their lives.
Dr. Sarpong was presenting the health indicators of the municipality at the Central Regional Annual Performance Review Meeting of the GHS in Cape Coast, on the theme: “strengthening human resource for health, towards achieving the millennium development goals”.
The four-day meeting is being attended by Metropolitan, Municipal and District directors of health, medical and senior nursing officers and other health staff in the Region to review its last year’s performance and evolve strategies to improve upon service delivery.
He explained that the abuse of that drug was dangerous because it could cause excessive bleeding, partial retained foetus, leading to infections in the uterus or ruptured uterus and called for the control of the supply of the drug which could be purchased on the counter, to stem its abuse.
On HIV/AIDS, he said of the 3,614 people who donated blood to the various health facilities in the Municipality last year, 325 tested positive to HIV while 65 expectant mothers who were among a total of 5,476 mothers screened through the mother to child transmission (MTCT) method, also tested positive.
He said they were put on anti retroviral therapy to protect the babies from contracting the virus.
He described the development as “serious” and emphasized the municipal health administration’s determination to work tirelessly to combat the spread of the virus.
He further disclosed that malaria still tops the ten leading OPD cases, followed by anemia and gastro enteritis while malnourished children rose to 241 from 155 in 2009 and added that it managed to successfully treat about 87% of the cases successfully.
Dr Stephen Tietoh, District Director of Health Services (DDHS) of the Upper Denkyira West, said the nurse-patient ratio was one is to 2,243 and called for the construction of staff quarters and the roads leading to the area,
The district, a deprived one which is newly created with a provisional population of 55,644 has no single medical doctor in all the six health facilities found there while it has only four midwives.
Ms. Doris Ahelegbe, DDHS of the Ajumako-Anyan-Essiam district, said teenage pregnancy cases was rampant in the area and therefore her outfit was in the process of forming adolescent clubs to educate the youth on reproductive health to combat the menace.
She called on traditional authorities to release land to the health service to create more CHPS compounds to bring health services more closer to the people.