This newspaper carried a news story which contained shocking revelations about two teenage girls, age 13 from Berbice, who were married to older men and one of whom is pregnant.
The fact that our students, as young as 13 years old, who ought to be at school educating and preparing themselves to face life’s challenges are engaging in such unwholesome and life changing activities is very worrying. Our adolescents will certainly have to face the consequences later down the road of these poor choices. The resulting problems could be many, for example; severe health complications for both the mother and child and serious social and economic problems.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), although adolescents aged 10-19 years account for 11 per cent of all births worldwide, they account for 23 per cent of the overall burden of disease due to pregnancy and childbirth. The organisation has reported that 14 per cent of all unsafe abortions in low- and middle-income countries are among women aged 15-19 years. About 2.5 million adolescents have unsafe abortions every year, and adolescents are more seriously affected by complications than are older women.
Many health problems are particularly associated with negative outcomes of pregnancy during adolescence. These include anaemia, malaria, HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, postpartum haemorrhage and mental disorders, such as depression.
Likewise, the social problems, both on families and the community are many. Many girls who become pregnant have to leave school. This has long-term implications for them as individuals, their families and communities. For example, when an adolescent girl becomes pregnant, her entire life is affected as her focus can no longer be her academic studies; she would now have to dedicate all her energies and resources in child rearing and caring. In most cases, the male partner is also similarly affected.
That said, we believe that in many of these cases, especially in girls under 15, such pregnancies are not the result of a deliberate choice but rather an absence of choices, and of circumstances beyond a girl’s control. Early pregnancies reflect powerlessness, poverty and pressures from partners, peers, families and communities. Hence, there is need for approaches that build girls’ human capital, help them make decisions about their lives, including matters of sexual and reproductive health, and offer them real opportunities so that motherhood is not seen as their only destiny.
Girls need to have access to both sexual and reproductive health services and to the right kind of information so that they can make informed choices about their own lives. In many communities, especially in the Hinterland areas, these services are lacking.
The World Health Assembly had adopted a resolution urging member states to accelerate actions to improve the health of young people. It included these specific measures: reviewing and revising policies to protect young people from early child-bearing; providing access to contraception and reproductive health-care services; and promoting access to accurate information on sexual and reproductive health.
Certainly, it is time that the issue of teenage pregnancy be brought to the fore for discussion and debate at the national level; and more importantly to craft a way forward to deal with the problem. At the same time, it is imperative that the Government and other NGOs step up their campaigns, especially in Hinterland areas where there seems to be a high prevalence of teen pregnancies, some of which occur as a result of the victims being raped.
It is quite unfortunate that in spite of the case referred to earlier being highly publicised via the media, the authorities here have not seen the need to convene a national dialogue on how best to address the issue of teenage pregnancy and its accompanying social and economic problems.
