Population council focuses on women

The National Population Council in Ghana says women's empowerment, the education of girls and unsafe abortion will be at the heart of its programme for the next millenium, PANA reported on Thursday. The council's executive secretary, Richard Turkson, told a news conference in Accra that these could be achieved through strengthening links with government ministries, departments and agencies and non-governmental organisations to intensify public education, PANA reported. Turkson said that as a result of such partnerships already in place, a number of policy guidelines for population control had already been produced. They include the medium-term health strategy, national reproductive policy, draft national adolescent reproductive health and national communication strategy. He added there had been a sharp decline in fertility rates from 6.5 children per woman in 1960 to 4.5 in 1998, while the use of modern contraceptives had improved from 5 percent in 1981 to 13 percent in 1999, PANA reported. The 23-member council was established in 1992 as an institutional framework to translate the national population goals, objectives and strategies into programmes, PANA said.