The Regional Director for West and Central Africa of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Dr Sennen Hounton, has called for a comprehensive approach to reducing teenage pregnancies and improving the sexual and reproductive health of adolescents.
He said protecting girls, providing accurate information and expanding access to contraception remained essential.
Speaking during a ministerial session at the African Union Extraordinary Summit on Health in Accra last Tuesday, Dr Hounton said countries that had adopted broad, evidence-based interventions were recording measurable success in reaching adolescents and young people with quality services.
He said the first priority should be protecting women and girls by tackling harmful cultural practices such as child marriage while ensuring that every girl had access to education.
“We need to fight harmful practices and child marriage, but also promote girls’ education,” he said, explaining that education empowered girls to make informed decisions about their health and future.
Dr Hounton called for the need to provide adolescents with accurate information about their bodies and sexual and reproductive health, regardless of whether they were in school.
“There needs to be information about their body and how it functions so that they can make informed decisions,” he stated.
Contraceptives
He also stressed the importance of improving access to contraceptives, arguing that evidence showed information alone was insufficient to prevent unintended pregnancies.
“The conversation about abstinence is good for the churches, but the reality, based on our data, is that young people must have access to contraceptive products,” he said.
To improve access, Dr Hounton urged governments and partners to embrace digital technologies that would enable young people to obtain reproductive health information and services more easily.
On financing, he said many African governments understood the interventions needed but were constrained by debt servicing and limited fiscal space.
He said UNFPA was collaborating with the African Development Bank to establish a special financing instrument that would enable governments to access concessional loans to strengthen health programmes.
Dr Hounton also called for stronger accountability, urging governments to use health data not only for monitoring but also to drive action at local government level.
He said regularly reviewing progress at municipal and regional levels would ensure that governments and communities remained accountable for improving the health and well-being of women, girls and young people.
