GRPA wants comprehensive policy to tackle teenage pregnancy

By Jomo Paul

[www.inewsguyana.com] – Executive Director of the Guyana Responsible Parenthood Association (GRPA), Pastor Patricia Sherratan-Bisnauth says there is urgent need for a comprehensive policy to tackle teenage pregnancy in Guyana.

Sherratan-Bisnauth during an interview with iNews said that the policy should be focused more towards sexual education in teens since the average teenager still shirks on the subject as some sort of taboo.

The need to “address the situation of teenage pregnancy with a comprehensive sexuality education programme; where girls and boys when giving them education, they will be able to make wiser choices and not fall by the wayside by taking these risky chances,” the Executive Director told iNews.

She explained that at present the GRPA is conducting a programme with the intention of sending 100 girls back to school.

Bisnauth explained that “a lot of our girl children are on a downward slide. Some of them are already living in poverty; so they slip further away into this vicious cycle…national development cannot really take place when so many of our girls are left behind.”

She said that this cycle can be averted by edifying the youth. These remarks were made while the GRPA hosted a street fair on Main Street Georgetown, where participants were able to engage in a host of activities including sex education.

Persons were also able to decorate post cards to the 100 mothers that will be sent back to school compliments of the GRPA.