The international Safe abortion day is being commemorated across the globe since 1990 on every 28th September. It is the annual day of action in support of the right to safe abortion for all maternal mothers.
The novel COVID-19 pandemic has restricted access not only to safe abortion but also to all other sexual and reproductive healthcare services, including pregnancy and delivery care.
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For this year’s international safe abortion day, activists are calling on all countries to ;
- remove laws and policies restricting access to safe abortion;
- facilitate access to safe abortion and post-abortion care for everyone who needs them;
- ensure that post-abortion care is universally available on an emergency basis, provided at a community level by midwives trained in MVA and/or with pills;
- move most abortions out of secondary and tertiary hospitals into community-based, primary care, day clinics, run by trained nurses, midwives, and other mid-level providers;
- allow the use of telemedicine and self-managed abortion up to 12 weeks of pregnancy, in line with WHO guidance;
- allow outpatient medical abortion in the second trimester, with social distancing in the clinic and without requiring operating theatre conditions;
- approve medical abortion pills (mifepristone and misoprostol) on national Essential Medicines Lists;
- decriminalize abortion to the extent possible − expanding legal grounds, increasing the upper time limit, removing barriers, and third party approval.
It is against this background that DKT International, an organization that is committed to providing reproductive health care services to clients in collaboration with DKT Woman Care Global has held a training session called ‘ Papayas Training Activation Agenda’ to demystify safe abortion practice in Ghana. The training which took place at the organization’s office premises at Dzorwulu, Accra on the 27th of September engaged the media on the use of the Manual Vacuum Aspirator (MVA) to demystify safe abortion services. The objectives of the event were to :
- Improve the perception around abortion, post-abortion, and miscarriage management.
- Increase awareness around the manual vacuum aspirator(MVA ) use among the general public.
- Initiate positive,non-corporative ,sharable content.
The round table discussion formed part of DKT International’s urge to promote information and understanding of contraceptives as well as safe abortion products.
Speaking to Dr. Ali Samba, the Director of Medical Affairs at Korlebu Teaching Hospital who was the guest speaker for the event, he revealed that Unsafe Abortion constitutes about 9.2% of maternal deaths in Ghana. He continued to say that, Central America, Latin America, Africa, and Sub Sahara Africa bear the highest burden of unsafe abortion with about 550 per 100,000 mortality rate. Dr. Ali also demonstrated with pawpaw to prove how safe it is using the Manual Vacuum Aspirator (MVA) device for abortion and encourage that services should be made available to all maternal mothers to prevent mortality resulting from unsafe abortion.
Source: Jullie Jay-Kanz
Watch the video of the event below
