By Saio Marrah
Sierra Leone’s First Lady, Fatima Jabbie Bio, has during the 2023 Girls Health Summit organized by West Africa Women and Girls Empowerment-Sierra Leone (WAWGE-SL), called for concerted efforts to tackle the harmful drug, Kush.
She made the call during her keynote address at the summit, held at the Freetown City Hall on Tuesday 10th October 2023, with the theme “Breaking Barriers On Adolescent Girls Health.”
According to her, it is a serious human disaster and that if it is not tackled “we would be pretending to be solving problems.”
She also blamed importers for bringing in the drug pointing out that most of them do not give it to their own children. She also highlighted peer pressure as one of the driving forces for young people getting into drug abuse.
She noted that the government’s Free Quality Education programme would not be fruitful when there is increase of drug abuse among youths.
On that vein, she called on the adolescent girls at the summit to listen to their parents over their peers in order to be better persons in society.
Responding to a suggestion from a participant that government should establish rehabilitation centre for addicts, the first lady insisted that the importers and those selling the drug should be targeted instead.
The first lady called on adolescent schoolgirls to focus on their education and abstain from sex. According to her, there is no guarantee that they would not get pregnant once they indulge in sexual intercourse.
She warned the adolescent girls about unprotected sex that can expose persons to many sexually transmitted diseases like HIV and AIDS.
Madam Bio urged the girls to wait for the appropriate time, before venturing into intimacy.
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The Programme Director of WAWGE-SL, Mariam Janneh, said in her brief statement that the summit is a platform for them to come together, share knowledge on issues affecting girls’ reproductive health and wellbeing in the country.
According to her, those are fundamental human right issues that must be addressed and therefore called on the participants at the summit to share knowledge on how to approach them.
She called on the participants to make use of the opportunity
A representative of UNFPA, Nadia Rashid noted that in as much as Sierra Leone has done a lot in tackling issues affecting adolescent girls, there are still huge challenges.
Copyright (c) 2023 Politico (11/10/23)
