Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Nov 15, 2013 News
– UNFPA emphasises
In light of the fact that pregnant adolescent girls are classified as a neglected group, fervent efforts should be made to advocate for measures to not only protect them but also transform society’s perception in this regard.
This notion has been extensively amplified in the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)’s State of the World Population 2013 Report which was officially launched at the Regency Suites/Hotel, Hadfield Street, Georgetown, on Wednesday by Minister of Health, Dr Bheri Ramsaran.
The Report outlines that in recognition of the need for pregnant teenage girls to be protected, many countries have taken up the cause of preventing adolescent pregnancies, often through actions aimed at changing a girl’s behaviour. And according to the UNFPA Report, implicit in such interventions is a belief that the girl is ultimately responsible for preventing pregnancy, and an assumption that if she does become pregnant, she is at fault. “Such approaches and thinking are misguided because they fail to account for the circumstances and societal pressures that conspire against adolescent girls and make motherhood a likely outcome of their transition from childhood to adulthood,” the Report stated.
The Report, which understandably embraces the theme, “Motherhood in childhood: Facing the challenge of adolescent pregnancy,” explains that when a young girl is forced into marriage, for example, she rarely has a say in whether, when or how often she will become pregnant.
Moreover, a pregnancy-prevention intervention, whether an advertising campaign or a condom distribution programme, is irrelevant to a girl who has no power to make any consequential decisions.
The Report has therefore pointed out that remedial measures must include new ways of thinking about the challenge of adolescent pregnancy. Instead of viewing the girl as the problem and changing her behaviour as the solution, the publication further states that “governments, communities, families and schools should see poverty, gender inequality, discrimination, lack of access to services, and negative views about girls and women as the real challenges, and the pursuit of social justice, equitable development and the empowerment of girls as the true pathway to fewer adolescent pregnancies.”
In the past, efforts and resources to prevent adolescent pregnancy directed much focus on girls between the ages of 15 and 19. But, according to the UNFPA Report, the greatest vulnerabilities are in fact girls who are 14 and younger who face the greatest risk of complications and death from pregnancy and childbirth.
The Report seeks to explain further that this group of very young adolescents is typically overlooked by, or beyond the reach of, national health, education and development institutions, often because they are forced into marriages and are prevented from attending school or accessing sexual and reproductive health services.
However, it was clearly amplified in the Report that the needs of this vulnerable group is immense and governments, civil society, communities and the international community must do much more to protect them and support their safe and healthy transition from childhood and adolescence to adulthood.
It was outlined too that “in addressing adolescent pregnancy, the real measure of success or failure of governments, development agencies, civil society and communities is how well or poorly we respond to the needs of this neglected group.” As such, it has been deduced by UNFPA that adolescent pregnancy is intertwined with issues of human rights.
In light of this, local efforts have already been engaged to address the challenge of teenage pregnancy here. Information emanating from the Ministry of Health suggests that teenagers account for a little more than half of the 31 per cent of all recorded pregnancy complications among young girls and older women.
According to Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Dr Shamdeo Persaud, the Health Ministry recognises that there are several benefits if young girls refrain from becoming pregnant too early.
“Not only can a young girl be able to complete her education, develop her social skills and acquire a career, but there are also some physiological benefits to delaying pregnancies until a more mature age,” Dr Persaud said.
He emphasised that these targeted teenage girls are still growing in terms of the development of their bones and reproductive organs among other aspects of human development.
Moreover, Dr Persaud, speaking at a media briefing earlier this year, said that intervening measures have allowed for a noticeable reduction in teenage pregnancy and by extension, a decline in the incidence of complicated pregnancies. According to him, in 2003, the under-15 age group accounted for close to four percent of all pregnancies. This was reduced in 2011 to just about one per cent. This reduction, according to Dr Persaud, represented less than 100 pregnancies.
During the same period, too, there were about 5.2 per cent of girls between the ages of 15 and 16 who were pregnant, but the percentage was reduced to 2.6, Dr Persaud noted.
And though the age of 17 is regarded as a consensual age of sex, the CMO disclosed that the Ministry of Health has ascertained that even pregnancies among girls between the ages of 17 and 19 have declined.
He revealed that in 2008, girls of this age accounted for 21 per cent of all pregnancies but by 2011, the figure had dropped to 17.1 per cent.
“Across all of the age groups we have made significant progress in reducing pregnancy in the under-19 age altogether,” Dr Persaud said.
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Apr 19, 2024
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