Mr Sampson Addo, Nkoranza Municipal Health Information Officer, says sexually transmitted diseases (STDs)are rife in the Municipality, because teenagers are engaging in early and unprotected sexual practices.

According to him, because adolescent boys and girls are not able to control their sexual desires, teenage pregnancy and school dropouts are assuming alarming proportion.

Mr Addo made the observation during an address of 90 community-based surveillance volunteers at a day’s workshop on Adolescent Health Reproductive at Nkoranza in the Brong-Ahafo Region.

The workshop organised by the Municipal Directorate of Health Services and sponsored by the Department for International Development of the United Kingdom, aimed at educating the volunteers about lives of adolescents, particularly to encourage them to shun social vices for better livelihoods.

The Municipal Health Information Officer said studies revealed that about 15 per cent of maternal deaths occurring in the Municipality were the result of the practice of unsafe abortions and therefore urged the volunteers to join in the campaign against that negative practice.

Mr Addo urged nurses and health workers to promote the welfare of adolescents, especially those who become pregnant, because: “If they are ridiculed by the people in their communities for being pregnant they resort to primitive ways of aborting the foetus which sometimes cause their deaths.”