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As the world marks the 50th anniversary of the World’s Population Day this year, the National Population Council (NPC) has expressed concern about Ghana’s Population.

The NPC says the country population does not match its available infrastructural facilities.

These infrastructures needs are in health, education, food support, housing, roads, among others.

This, the Council said, had resulted in pressure on available facilities and the facilitators, including teachers and health workers.

The NPC said the Population and Housing census (PHC) puts the population growth rate at 2.5 per cent per annum, which shows that Ghana's population was still growing rapidly.

The PHC report indicated that the age structure of the population was dominated by young people, with about 40 per cent under age 15 (PHC, 2010), which implies, that Ghana has high dependency ratio due to unemployment and underemployment.

Ms Florence Hagan, Greater Accra Regional Director of the National Population Council Secretariat, however, said the country’s population dynamics could be turned into a valuable demographic dividend if investments were made in reproductive health programmes, including family planning.

“This will help achieve a lower fertility rate and more balanced age structure that would lead to improved and sustained quality of life for the people of Ghana.

“Voluntary family planning commodities though cheap play critical role in enabling couples and individuals to realise their reproductive preferences, thereby shaping the country's demographic path.

“It will simultaneously improve health, education, raising standard of living and increasing savings to develop other sectors of the economy”, Ms Hagan said in an interview with the GNA in Accra.

In a message to mark the day, Ms Hagan also expressed her joy that Ghana had scale up service delivery on sexual and reproductive health/rights among other health care provisions by the introduction of the Community-based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) programme.

She said trained nurses were also stationed in selected communities to provide health care services to members of such communities.

The World Population day is marked on July 11, every year, to focus attention on the role and the importance of population as a factor in the development processes.

The global theme for this year is "Family Planning is a Human Right", while the national celebrations was themed: "Family Planning is a Human Right: An Imperative to Sustainable Economic Development".