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Feb 09, 2017 News
The rate of teenage pregnancy recorded in three regions of the country has been found to be higher than the national recorded rate. This state of affairs was recently amplified by Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Dr. Shamdeo Persaud.
According to Dr. Persaud, “when you look at Regions One, Seven, Eight and Nine, the teen fertility rate skyrockets to 6.5 when compared to 2.6 for the overall country”.
In fact, the CMO revealed that based on some available statistics, four out of every 100 15-year-olds are pregnant. Added to this, he noted that statistics also show that 16 of every 100 under-19s have already given birth. Even as he noted that several girls were mothers before the age of 21, the CMO considered that “some of them have grandmothers who are just 15 years older than their mothers; so there seems to be a cycle.”
It is the expectation of the CMO that the recent national launch of the Adolescent Clinic Day/ Community Parenting Support Group by the Adolescent Health Unit of the Ministry of Public Health will help to address this prevailing situation.
According to Dr. Persaud, 41 percent of teens who become mothers live in homes with mothers alone and about 24 percent of them live with grandparents, while about seven percent live with a father alone. However, some have become pregnant while living with traditional families consisting of both parents.
In Guyana, according to the last census, about 35 percent of the population was under the age of 15 while another 8.9 per cent were between 15 and 19. This suggests that a significant portion of the population is at the critical adolescent age, according to Dr. Persaud, who noted that in most countries, adolescents are a very important part of society.
He noted that the risk that teens take multiply as they pass the age whereby they are sheltered by homes. As such, he noted that it can be speculated that when youths enter the stage of primary education their vulnerability increases.
“Their sexual debut starts on average at 12, but can be as early as nine years for both boys and girls,” said Dr. Persaud as he disclosed that about 33 per cent of females by the age of 12 would have already had one sexual encounter.
This is compounded by the fact that many of these youths also indulge in the abuse of alcohol and tobacco at an early age.
“When we look at their consumption of tobacco and alcohol we find that girls are probably a little better, but 15.5 percent of girls under 19 drink and 2 to 4.7 percent of boys drink regularly…16.7 percent of boys under 19 smoke and 3.8 percent of girls also smoke,” Dr. Persaud disclosed.
“We know that our modern Guyanese teens are like any other teens across the world and have access to two cell phones – Digicel and GTT – so they do less in terms of physical activities. Also they eat a lot of food that they like [that is] very sweet and salty foods, foods low in fibre, high in calories, they walk less, they play less, they run around less,” underscored Dr. Persaud, as he noted that this does not augur well for their health on the whole, thus putting then an even greater risk.
“Most of us would recall the days when we had to get out and assist the family in our farms with the chickens, even the persons who lived in Georgetown (the capital city) had to help out. All in all this precious group of Guyanese, our adolescents, are under siege not only from their own unguided action, but also from the pressures that exists out there,” said Dr. Persaud, as he stressed the importance of the implementation of programmes to help reverse the prevailing trend.
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