Ms. Millicent Asante and Ms. Rosemary Fosuaa, both senior midwives at Tema’s International Maritime Hospital (IMaH) in Tema have warned women against overusing emergency contraception, which can lead to fertility problems and cancer later in life.
They stressed that one emergency contraceptive tablet is comparable to 84 normal oral contraceptive tablets (three packs).
They recommended that emergency contraception be used no more than twice a year, rather than on a daily or weekly basis, as some young women were.
The IMaH Senior Midwives said this at the weekly “Your Health! Our Collective Responsibility! A Ghana News Agency Tema Regional Office initiative aimed at promoting health-related communication and providing a platform for health information dissemination to influence personal health choices through improved health literacy
The Ghana News Agency’s Tema Regional Office developed the public health advocacy platform “Your Health! Our Collective Responsibility” to investigate the components of four health communication approaches: informing, instructing, convincing, and promoting.
Speaking on “Family Planning and ANC,” the IMaH Senior Midwives stated the youth’s use of emergency contraception was concerning.
The midwives explained that because medicines function by injecting hormones into the woman’s body to postpone the release of eggs for fertilization by sperm implanted in them during unprotected sex, their regular usage could disrupt the hormonal balance.
Ms. Asante and Ms. Fosuaa recommended young women who couldn’t stop having sex to go to any health facility, interact with the health providers, and ask for a suitable family planning technique, as this was safer than taking emergency contraception pills on a regular basis.
They emphasized, however, that abstinence was the best form of protection against pregnancy and hence encouraged them to abstain, adding that the use of condoms provided them with twofold protection against pregnancy, and sexually transmitted diseases, such as HIV/AIDS, are also issues.
According to them, family planning gives women the option to take control of their bodies and select when and how to space their children, which should be taken advantage of.
Mr. Francis Ameyibor, Regional Manager of Ghana News Agency Tema, recommended people read patient information leaflets (PILs) completely because they include information regarding medicine administration, precautions, and potential adverse effects.
He mentioned that most drugs come with patient information booklets that help patients comprehend what type of medication they’re taking and even how to store it. “It is the product manual of medicine,” he explained.
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