World Population Day by Abibiman Foindation

PRESS STATEMENT

World Population Day 11 July

Theme: Focus is on Adolescent Pregnancy

DATE: 11^th July, 2013

A world of 7 billion is both a challenge and an opportunity with implications on sustainability, urbanization, access to health services and youth empowerment. The United Nations estimates that global population will swell to 9 billion by the year 2050.

About 16 million girls under age 18 give birth each year. Another 3.2 million undergo unsafe abortions. The vast majority – 90 per cent -- of the pregnant adolescents in the developing world are married. But for far too many of these girls, pregnancy has little to do with informed choice. Often it is a consequence of discrimination, rights violations (including child marriage), inadequate education or sexual coercion.

At least one billion people around the world do not get enough to eat. A nearly equal amount – 1.4 billion – are overweight, and can suffer from various health problems such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease. And more than 200 million women across the globe have an unmet need for contraception, keeping them from planning how many children they want to have and when. In addition, women farmers often lack access to land, credit, and education making it harder for them to provide for their families. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that if women had the same access to these services as men, global malnutrition could be reduced by 12 to 17 percent.

Improving schooling for all children and youth, especially increasing educational among girls and women because population growth combines with poverty and lack of access to resources search for fuel-wood, food, water and other basic needs

Education for women and man will reduces desired family size and fertility, social pressures on women to have early and frequent pregnancies. Together, these steps would result in a gradually declining world population within a few decades.

When women are empowered to plan and space their children, they are better able to adapt to climate change and ensure the survival of their families. In addition, slowing population growth could help reduce future emissions.

Climate change is ultimately produced by the pressures placed on the earth’s ecosystem by humankind’s development efforts

Teenage pregnancies is on the increase in the Central Regional of Ghana From the year 2010, teenage pregnancies progressed from 12, 064 to 13,059 in 2011, then to 13,780 2013. By Medical Director of the Central Regional Hospital, Dr. Daniel Asare

Abibimman Foundation, AYICC –Ghana, GCAP-Ghana and IDAY-Ghana, believe in sex education and raise awareness of the issue of adolescent pregnancy in the hopes of delivering a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe, and every young person’s potential is fulfilled

Kenneth Nana Amoateng

Chief Executive Officer

Abibiman Foundation

www.abibimmanfoundation.org/ Tel +233-303-213918, Mob:+233244023651