By Zainab Joaque
First Lady, Sia Nyama Koroma, has told a two-day conference for religious and traditional leaders in Freetown that the country must put an end to child marriage and stop the major health consequences that come with teenage pregnancy.
“We must work hard to change attitudes in families and societies at large.We must support our boys and girls to be valuable members of our society or they become economic burdens”, she told the gathering at the Bintumani Hotel on Tuesday.
In 2008 the office of the First Lady collaborated with the UN population fund to organise the first consultative forum for traditional and religious leaders. The forum looked at the role of those leaders in the reduction of maternal and neurological mobility in Sierra Leone.
The office, she said,targeted traditional and religious leaders because they knew that they were influential agents in society, adding that since then they had continuously engaged them on teenage pregnancy, child marriage and family planning methods.
Madam Koroma stated that the issues were being discussed in every region of the country and throughout the consultations contributions made by religious and traditional leaders had been very valuable.
“We seek the help of our revered traditional and religious leaders to join us in our fight against the evils of teenage pregnancy and early marriages. The rationale for engaging religious and traditional rulers is simple. More than ninety percent of people living in Sierra Leone are affiliated to some form of religion, be it Christian, Muslim, traditional or others”, she said.
This week’s conference was a follow up action to the campaign to accelerate the reduction of maternal mortality in Africa which was launched in May 2010 in Sierra Leone.
