A total of 168 learners in Uganda's Gulu District carried out abortions in 2020, Daily Monitor has learnt.

Data compiled by the district's health office, indicates that 4,058 abortions were conducted in Gulu District between January and December 2020 in 63 health facilities.

However, 168 of them were students and pupils. The number nearly doubles the 2019 figure of 3,200 abortion cases with the number of under aged girls going for abortion at 88.

In an interview, Mr. William Onyai, the Gulu District health officer, said the 168 cases among learners are part of the 330 abortion cases that resulted from increased sexual violence on women.

He blamed the problem on gaps in parenting in communities during the lockdown.

"The 3,728 cases are as a result of pressure, malaria, infections, urinary tract infections (UTIs) and use of herbs as well as rudimentary methods to terminate pregnancy by some women," Mr Onyai said .

He added: "A total of 1,020 (50.5 percent) of all admissions due to abortion were aged 25-49 years, 684 (33.8 percent) aged 20-24 and 315 (15.6 percent) aged 15-19 years."

Ms Christine Suzan Akidi, the senior nursing officer-in-charge of Gynaecology Ward at Gulu Regional Referral Hospital, said young women were self-medicating in order to exterminate pregnancies.

"Women buy medicine especially school going girls and induce labour and when it begins to come out, they rush to the hospital. The situation is worrying because we register more than 50 cases a month and it is most common with women aged between 15 and 45 years," Ms Akidi said.

According to Ms Akidi, in period of 12 months the hospital received up to 1,288 women at the facility with complications following abortions.

"We are overwhelmed. Many of these women are referred from private clinics while others from the community after using local herbs. They arrive here with complications like sepsis, missed abortion, threatened abortion, and incomplete abortion, among others."

Meanwhile, at Gulu Central Police Station, police say a number of cases of assault and domestic violence meted on expectant women significantly increased in 2020.

Mr. Moses Ogwang, the police community liaison officer for Gulu, said this has contributed a lot to the increase in the number of abortion cases in the district in the same year.

According to Mr. Ogwang, we have been registering at least a case on a daily basis whereby pregnant women are losing their pregnancies due to violence which forces some to abort.

"Most men are denying pregnancies and fearing responsibilities and as a result when a woman tells a man she is pregnant, the man just fights the wife claiming the pregame is not his," Mr. Ogwang said.

(With input from agencies)