The Director of the Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit (DOVVSU) of the Ghana Police Service, Chief Superintendent of Police, Owusuwaa Kyeremeh, has called on health service providers to report cases of defilement to her Unit.

According to her, the failure of health personnel to report such incidents has made it difficult for the Unit to appropriately ensure that culprits are sanctioned and has further led to large differences in data collected by both the Ghana Health Service and the DOVVSU on teenage pregnancy and defilement cases.

Speaking on news analysis show Newsfile on Saturday, she stated that the law requires health professionals to report incidents of defilement to the Police.

“So anytime a victim of defilement or sexual assault walks to the health service provider, whoever attends to her must report to the Police. So if the health providers were reporting to us, then we would get a true reflection of the actual statistics on the ground, at least for those who report to the providers,” she said.

Chief Superintendent of Police, Owusuwaa Kyeremeh thus encouraged them to report to the police for the law to take its due course.

She stressed that all that is needed for a report to be made to the DOVVSU is just a simple phone call.

“So we encourage our various health providers, if you look at section 6, filing of a complaint under the Domestic Violence act filing of a complaint with Police, we have different people who can report to the Police when they suspect any form of domestic violence and all that.

“And so health providers are mandated under the law to report to the Police on any case of domestic violence, and sexual assaults are under the domestic violence so we encourage service providers, doctors, nurses, health facilities that these children visit, they should kindly report to us.

“It is just a matter of getting the contact person of either the DOVVSU officer or the District Officer or the Divisional commander or the Chief Inspector at the District and calling the person. You do not need to move, just call,” she said.