By Isabella Gyau Orhin
A Medical Officer at the Eastern Regional Health Directorate, Dr. Joe Taylor has described the female pelvic as a ‘goldmine’ where quack healthcare providers are busily making huge sums of money through galamsey (illegal mining) or unsafe abortion.
Dr. Taylor, a Gynaecologist by profession, said some qualified doctors and male nurses are also involved in the business and are digging into the female pelvic.
She explained that, the practice of terminating pregnancy has become a lucrative business since women desperate to get rid of pregnancy are vulnerable and can easily be exploited.
Dr. Taylor was speaking at a meeting on reproductive health organized in Accra by the Population Reference Bureau (PRB) based in Washington DC, USA.
He also alleged that some doctors are cashing in on the issue quietly and charging exorbitant fees since women cannot walk into public health institutions where charges are low and demand the termination of unwanted pregnancy.
“In fact it is the abortions that some of my colleagues are using to sustain their private clinics,” he said.
According to Dr. Taylor, what makes the situation serious is that termination of unwanted pregnancy sometimes takes place in unauthorized places such as doctors’ bedrooms, toilets, dining tables, and bathrooms which are risky for the patients.
He said unsafe abortion is a procedure for terminating unwanted pregnancy either by persons lacking the necessary skills or in an environment lacking minimal medical standards.
According to Dr. Taylor, there are doctors who perform abortions in their garages adding, we are talking to them to put a stop to such practices.
As a member of a committee that is coming out with a new protocol n Reproductive Health that will ensure that women can access safe abortion services in public health institutions, Dr. Taylor says the best precaution is to avoid unwanted pregnancy.
“Every procedure has risks, safe means it is done by skilled personnel and with that there is a lower chance of risks.”
Dr. Taylor said it is too risky to use abortion as a family planning method and women who undergo the procedure need to be counseled to avoid future occurrences.
He said if doctors were counseling women who consult them to procure abortion services, the number of women who seek abortion would have reduced considerably.
Such doctors he said do not provide their patients on post abortion care and contraceptive use.
According to Nana Oye Lithur, a legal expert abortion is legal in Ghana in certain cases and this is highlighted by the additional protocol to the African Charter which states that “State parties are to protect reproductive rights of women by authorizing medical abortion in cases of sexual assault, rape, incest and where the pregnancy endangers the mental and physical health of the mother or foetus.”
Although induced abortion is the oldest and common fertility control method, few societies have looked at the issue dispassionately; this is because experts say it bothers on morality.
Lithur also says it is time women are given the chance to choose whether they would want to keep a pregnancy or abort it under safe and affordable conditions.
The World Health Organization defines abortion as the termination of pregnancy before viability.
African women are said to experience the greatest risk of death from unsafe abortion.
Studies show that one in 150 African women die from unsafe abortion, as against one in 250 women, in Asia; one in 800 in Latin America and one in 3,700 from the Northern countries.
Again about 20 million abortion cases take place each year worldwide with 55,000 abortions on the average per day.
The Ghana Demographic and Health Survey of 1993 puts maternal mortality ratio in Ghana at 214 per 100,000 live births.
A study conducted by the then Chief Pathologist of Ghana’s premier teaching hospital Korle Bu, Prof. Agyeman Badu Akosa in 1998 indicate that 30 percent of maternal deaths are due to unsafe abortions.
According to Dr. Afua Hesse in the book “Abortion within Reproductive Health in
Ghana,” until 1985 abortion in Ghana was governed by the criminal code of 1960. (ACT 29).
Under the code anyone causing or attempting to cause an abortion, regardless of whether the woman was pregnanat could be fined or imprisoned for up to 10 years. Also a woman inducing her own abortion or undergoing an illegal abortion was subject to the same punishment.
Ghana enacted a new law on abortion in 1985 which made it a crime for any person to give any poison or other noxious substances to a woman or use any instruments or other means with the intent of causing an abortion.
According to the Law, a legal abortion must be performed by a registered medical practitioner with the consent of the pregnant woman.
The abortion must be performed in a government hospital or a private hospital or a clinic registered under the Private Hospitals and Maternity Homes act of 1958 or in a place approved for that purpose by the law.
According to Dr. Taylor, some women resort to abortion because they have no access family planning or as a result of contraceptive failure.
Others he said do it because the pregnancy was as a result of rape, sexual abuse economic and social reasons.
Those who have no means to procure at the doctors table resort to drinking concoctions and using all forms of crude methods to get rid of unwanted pregnancy.
In an interview with Ghana Television recently, Prof. Agyeman Badu Akosa now the Director of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) said women should be given access to safe re[productive health services in the country.
The Code of Ethics for the GHS which defines the general moral principles and rules of behavior for all service personnel in the Ghana Health Service does not make room for quacks , forbids exploitation and expects doctors to operate within the law.
“All Service personnel shall be competent, dedicated, honest, client-focused and operate within the law of the land ,” it states adding, “All Health Professionals shall be registered and remain registered with their Professional Regulatory Bodies.”
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