Health professionals have expressed worry about the increasing numbers of women dying through unsafe abortions despite the availability of facilities for safe operations. It is estimated that abortion-related deaths account for over 30 percent of maternal mortality in the country. Information available to Luv News indicates that many women who have died at the Komfo Anokye Hospital get there in critical condition. Elton John Brobbey spoke with some health practitioners on the consequences of unsafe abortion, described as the termination of a pregnancy by unqualified persons using questionable procedures and processes under hazardous environmental conditions. According to Elton, some women either insert crude implements in their genitals or drink concoctions in their bid to get rid of unwanted pregnancies. A gynaecologist at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH), Dr Yaw Opare Larbi, said the Ghana Health Service’s target of halving maternal mortality by 2015 will not be met if urgent steps were not taken to curb the practice of unsafe abortion. He said apart from the many needles deaths health authorities had witnessed, “we’ve seen people who are now rendered infertile, and people who are now going to live with chronic pelvic pains for a long time – for the rest of their lives – and marriages are going to break down because women are not going to have children all because of this unsafe abortion. So the price we are paying is very huge.” Dr Eliazabeth Crentsil, also a gynaecologist at the KATH, said she could not understand why women resorted to using methods that endangered their lives when there were health facilities where they could be properly counselled and safe abortion performed for them if they chose to go ahead with it after the counselling. “I think that people should use these facilities so they would avoid the extreme conditions,” she advised. Source: Joy News/Ghana