{UAH} Teenage pregnancies surge in Busoga

Teenage pregnancies surge in Busoga-thanks NRM

Tuesday September 07 2021

Ms Faith Kyateka, the head of communications at Marie Stopes Uganda during a training workshop of media practitioners on how to report health stories held at Jinja City on September 3, 2021. Photo | Denis Edema

Summary

• The 2020 report indicates that young girls, especially in rural areas, have been experiencing challenges accessing family planning and health facilities.

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By Denis Edema

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The increasing number of teenage pregnancies in some parts of Busoga sub-region has been attributed to the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a report released by Marie Stopes Uganda.

The 2020 report indicates that young girls, especially in rural areas, have been experiencing challenges accessing family planning and health facilities.

Ms Faith Kyateka, the head of communications at Marie Stopes Uganda, described the teenage pregnancies in Busoga sub-region as "worrying" and called for collective intervention by stakeholders.

"A number of behavioural barriers for adolescent family planning uptake were identified and even when the services are available, lack of prompts to make decisions about family planning outweigh family planning health risks compared to unplanned pregnancies," she said.

Ms Kyateka was speaking in Jinja City on Friday last week during a training workshop for journalists on how to report health stories.

She added that a number of activities targeted for adolescents on family planning were unmet because of social norms and stigma among others.

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The report

According to the report, during the lockdown, adolescents have faced transport challenges, and while out of school, they lacked information on sexual reproductive health rights that their parents cannot openly share with them.

It is further reported that adolescents have the highest rate of frequently unsafe abortions and that of the 2.5 million adolescent girls in Uganda, 26 percent are sexually active and do not want a child.

Mr Samuel Balamaga, the Marie Stopes Uganda youth, and key population manager, said the state of unsafe abortions in Uganda is very high, with 314,000 abortions annually.

"The abortion rate in Uganda is higher than the estimated rate for the East African region as a whole, representative of 34 percent of women aged between 15 and 19 years, while 5,000 deaths occur annually due to unsafe abortions," he said.

According to the UNICEF database 2020 report, 1.3m girls globally marry before attaining the age of 15 years.

editorial@ug.nationmedia.com

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