No record of illegal abortions held

MALALANE – Although statistics by the minister of health, Mr Aaron Motsoaledi, has revealed that legal termination of pregnancies in the province are on the decline for the third consecutive year, Motsoaledi also admitted that neither the national nor provincial Departments of Health keep record of illegal abortion statistics.

According to Motsoaledi 3 104 legal termination of pregnancies were recorded for the time frame 2012/13, of which 55 were for women aged from 12 to 16 years. A total of 3 046 cases were recorded in the next year, 2013/14, of which 49 were executed on women aged 12 to 16. A total of 2 593 were recorded from 2014 to date. These were executed at six facilities across the province, the minster said.

According to the Choice of Termination of Pregnancy (CTOP) Act 1996 (Act No 92 of 1996), this service is executed at no cost to the clients if indigent, and costs are determined depending on the income of the patient in public hospitals as for any other medical condition, Motsoaledi added.

The minister furthermore stated that no study had been undertaken by the national or provincial health department to determine why women seek abortions from illegal or unsafe providers.

Motsoaledi however said, in an attempt to prevent unsafe abortion statistics from escalating in Mpumalanga, the department provides termination of pregnancy (TOP) in the designated health facilities which comply with the prescripts of the CTOP Act for safe performance of the procedure. He also gave the assurance that the department was continuously conducting value clarification workshops to address the issue of limited TOP services.

“In addition the department is conducting manual vacuum aspiration training in partnership with partners that support the implementation of TOP services that has introduced medical abortion services to increase access to this service,” he said. But, said the minister, at the end of the day the key to reducing unwanted pregnancies was to increase knowledge and access to sexual and reproductive health services.

“In line with this the department launched a revised contraceptive policy and introduced the contraception implant as a new and additional contraception method to increase the range of contraceptives available to women,” he concluded.