Ghana recorded 53,415 adolescent pregnancies between January and July 2026, including 1,501 involving girls aged 10 to 14, data from the Ghana Health Service (GHS) have shown.Geographic Reference
The figures, drawn from the Service’s routine Health Information System, represent pregnancies recorded at health facilities across the country during the first seven months of the year.
Sharifa Mohammed, Programme Manager for Adolescent Health and Development at the GHS, disclosed this at a National Multisectoral Dialogue on the Reduction of Teenage Pregnancy in Accra on Monday, September 14.
She said the figures were on course to approach the annual national burden of more than 100,000 adolescent pregnancies reported in national estimates.
The 2022 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey (GDHS) found that 15.2 per cent of girls aged 15 to 19 had ever been pregnant.
Ms. Mohammed said behind the statistics were individual girls whose education, health and future prospects could be jeopardised by pregnancy, particularly where appropriate support was unavailable.
She said adolescent pregnancies were significantly higher among girls who were out of school than those who remained in school, saying “this is evident that once we keep girls in school, we are bound to reduce adolescent or teenage pregnancies.”
The data also showed an adolescent birth rate of 117.5 births per 1,000 girls in the Savannah Region, above the reported Sub-Saharan African average of 104 per 1,000.
Ms. Mohammed said the Bole District in the Savannah Region recorded 230 births per 1,000 girls aged 18 to 19.
“The Upper East Region also recorded more than 2,400 adolescent pregnancies within the first five months of the year under review, including about 520 cases in the Bongo District alone,” she said.
The Programme Manager said the GHS had, since 2017, implemented a “Safety Net” intervention to address the health and social needs of adolescent girls.
The intervention provides comprehensive maternal and child health services tailored to adolescents, sexual and reproductive health education, psychosocial support, referrals and links to social protection services.
Under the programme, pregnant adolescents are also supported to return to school through collaboration with the Ghana Education Service (GES), where their health and circumstances permit.
Ms. Mohammed said girls who could not return to formal education could also be linked to civil society organisations and other services to acquire vocational and livelihood skills.
She said the Service had reached more than 310,000 young people with sexual and reproductive health information, while about 54,000 pregnant adolescents had been reached with services so far this year.
Clara Nyarkoah Anim, Programme Manager at MSI Reproductive Choices Ghana (MSIG), said teenage pregnancy was linked to education, access to information and services, gender and social norms, and poverty.
She said Ghana already had policies, strategies and programmes aimed at addressing the problem, but the major challenge was ensuring that those interventions were effectively implemented, coordinated, adequately resourced and subject to accountability.
She called for young people to be placed at the centre of interventions, noting that they understood the barriers and opportunities confronting them in ways that were not always captured in policy and programme documents.
