53,415 adolescent pregnancies in seven months
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Ghana Health Service facility records show 53,415 pregnancies among adolescents for January–July 2026. Of that total, 1,501 involved girls aged 10 to 14, its adolescent-health lead said in September.
The count was presented by Sharifa Mohammed, who manages the Service’s Adolescent Health and Development programme, in Accra on Monday, September 14. She addressed the National Multisectoral Dialogue on the Reduction of Teenage Pregnancy.
The facility pregnancy figures come from the Service’s routine health information system. They count girls who reached a facility.
Campaigners cited the same total in reports published on Thursday. At an International Day of the Girl celebration at Madina Technical Institute, CAMFED Association’s Perpetual Opata said it excludes girls who never attended a clinic.
The Alliance for Reproductive Health Rights’ programme manager, Isaac Nyampong, also cited the count. He spoke at a journalists’ training in the Bono and Bono East regions, organised with the UNFPA and Canada.
Ages, and how this year compares
Girls aged 15 to 19 make up most of the facility count. Mohammed said that age band was running at about 7,000 pregnancies a month over the seven months.
She said the pace was approaching the estimate of more than 100,000 adolescent pregnancies a year.
Service figures for 2016 to 2020, drawn from the same reporting system, put the five-year total at 542,131 among girls aged 15 to 19 and 13,444 among girls aged 10 to 14.
The 1,501 girls aged 10 to 14 already recorded by July 2026 sit close to that earlier yearly pace.
Across Ghana, 15.2 per cent of that age group had been pregnant. The survey put the adolescent birth rate at 63 per 1,000.
Where the facility rates are highest
Savannah’s adolescent birth rate in the 2026 facility data was 117.5 per 1,000. Mohammed put the average for sub-Saharan Africa at 104 per 1,000.
For Bole District’s 18- and 19-year-old girls, the rate reached 230 per 1,000.
She said the Upper East recorded more than 2,400 adolescent pregnancies in the first five months of the year, about 520 of them in Bongo District.
A count put before the region’s child protection committee had Upper East at 2,436 from January to May 2025, up from 2,073 in the same months of 2024. Twenty-five of the 2025 cases were girls aged 10 to 14.
What speakers said is driving it
Mohammed said girls outside the school system faced much higher pregnancy levels than those attending classes.
“This is evident that once we keep girls in school, we are bound to reduce adolescent or teenage pregnancies,” she said.
At the Accra dialogue, MSI Reproductive Choices Ghana programme manager Clara Nyarkoah Anim linked adolescent pregnancy to poverty, schooling, information and services, and social and gender expectations.
Ghana already has policies, she said. The failure is to implement them, fund them, coordinate them and account for them.
Nyampong described violence against girls, and adults who will not discuss sex, as part of the same problem. Some parents do not know how to have the conversation, he said, and culture and religion can make it uncomfortable.
He asked chiefs, queenmothers and religious leaders to take the education on, and said boys and men have to be included.
“We are experiencing a silent crisis that we need to begin to have a national conversation about, and it is about poor adolescent health outcomes,” he said.
At Madina, Dr Eric Kofi Adzore, who heads the Ghana TVET Service, urged families to support girls in learning a trade before marriage.
He said poverty, thin educational chances and harmful expectations were still pushing girls into early marriage and out of school. The celebration’s theme was “Skills Over Early Marriage: Unlocking Girls’ Potential Through TVET.”
What the Health Service is doing
The Service’s Adolescent Health Safety Net began in 2017. It combines care for young mothers and children with reproductive-health teaching, psychological and social support, and access to social protection.
With the Ghana Education Service, girls whose health allows it are supported to return to school. Girls who do not go back can be connected to civil society groups for vocational skills.
Mohammed said that, by the September dialogue, sexual and reproductive health information had reached over 310,000 young people during 2026. Services had also reached about 54,000 pregnant adolescents.
In August, with UNICEF, it trained 100 health workers and added 44 facilities in the Central Region. Safety Net there now covers 176 facilities.
It began in six districts of that region in 2020.
The 53,415 remains a facility count. Pregnancies among girls who never saw a health worker are not in it.
