Dr. Gloria Quansah Asare
THOUGH GOVERNMENT made a $3.25 million commitment towards deepening family healthcare education in the country in its 2011 budget, the money is yet to be disbursed to the appropriate health authorities.
Dr. Gloria Quansah Asare, Director, Family Health Division of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) made this known Thursday at a day’s sensitization and orientation workshop on female condoms for journalists in Accra.
The workshop was aimed at educating media personnel on how far Ghana as a country had come with the promotion of female condoms among the populace.
It also comes as a pre-event for the upcoming re-launch of the female condom.
Dr. Asare said despite being the first African country to venture into educating the populace on the use of condoms as a tool for family planning and fighting Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs), the momentum of condom use among women had waned substantially.
She said the situation had risen due to the lack of financial support to continuously carry out large scale promotion and distribution of the female condom.
“Social marketing efforts are virtually absent,” she indicated.
According to her, aside from urban sex workers, programmers have limited information about current prospective female condom users.
Dr. Asare noted that the female condom had primarily been positioned as a family planning commodity and had not been well integrated within HIV/AIDS programming.
“A multi-partner launch of the female condom occurred in Ghana in May 2000 in raising awareness, however, uptake remained and currently remains low,” she stressed.
She said though key stakeholders have a strong belief in the female condom’s potential, Ghanaian women were yet to come to terms with the product due to a cultural penchant not to use it.
According to Dr. Asare, the only safe and effective female initiated contraceptive method that provides protection against unintended pregnancies as well as sexually transmitted infections, including HIV and AIDS is the female condom.
She therefore called for an enhanced promotion of the condom among women to help promote gender equality, reduce infant mortality and also reduce maternal mortality.
By Henrietta Abayie