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Wednesday, July 16, 2025

Move to cut adolescent pregnancies

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20131209

In T&T out of every 1,000 births about 43 are ado­les­cent preg­nan­cies, says Kathryn Gilmore, deputy ex­ec­u­tive pro­gramme di­rec­tor of the Unit­ed Na­tions Pop­u­la­tion Fund (UNF­PA).She made the state­ment yes­ter­day at a mul­ti-stake­hold­er high lev­el con­sul­ta­tion on the re­duc­tion of ado­les­cent preg­nan­cy in the Caribbean at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain.

"Forty-three out of every 1,000 births is by a young woman be­tween 15 and 20. That's a high rate of ado­les­cent preg­nan­cy when you look at the fig­ures glob­al­ly and it's com­pa­ra­ble to fig­ures in the poor­est coun­tries around the world."And it's in­dica­tive to a rate of ado­les­cent preg­nan­cy that comes on­ly sec­ond to those rates that we see in sub-Sa­ha­ran Africa," Gilmore said.

She added that a re­gion like the Caribbean which had de­vel­oped over the past decade it was dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand how young women could be "left be­hind in this way."Asked about T&T's ado­les­cent preg­nan­cy rate Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan, who de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress on be­half of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, said the coun­try's ado­les­cent preg­nan­cy rate had dropped by 17 per cent.

At yes­ter­day's meet­ing he said stake­hold­ers al­so would be in­tro­duced to the re­gion­al frame­work to re­duce ado­les­cent preg­nan­cy draft­ed by Cari­com's tech­ni­cal meet­ing last Oc­to­ber."At this con­sul­ta­tion we must all be will­ing to push the lim­its of in­no­va­tion, break down the bar­ri­ers and un­clog the bot­tle­necks that cause the young to fall away from the main­stream," Khan said.

Urg­ing the im­por­tance of "re­pro­duc­tive ed­u­ca­tion" to be taught in schools Khan said sev­er­al oth­er fac­tors must be tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion, name­ly pos­i­tive par­ent­ing skills, strate­gies for teen preg­nan­cy pre­ven­tion, in­for­ma­tion on sex­u­al re­pro­duc­tive health and gen­der so­cial­i­sa­tion and chang­ing teenage be­hav­iour in re­la­tion­ships.Le­gal frame­works at times, he added, posed a ma­jor con­straint in be­ing able to reach "di­rect­ly in­to the heart of the hard is­sues" and solv­ing prob­lems.

"In light of the re­cent crimes against chil­dren in T&T we make an­oth­er ur­gent ap­peal to all cit­i­zens to speak out to break the si­lence when it comes to the pro­tec­tion of our chil­dren."Where the lives and safe­ty of our chil­dren are at stake each and every cit­i­zen has a moral oblig­a­tion and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to in­form the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties," Khan added.

Ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the UNF­PA Ba­batunde Os­o­time­hin, in pro­vid­ing glob­al sta­tis­tics said moth­er­hood in child­hood was a huge prob­lem, es­pe­cial­ly in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries where every year 7.3 mil­lion girls un­der 18 give birth."In the Caribbean, de­spite the fall in to­tal fer­til­i­ty rate, ado­les­cent birth rates re­main rel­a­tive­ly high."Among girls, aged 15 to 19, the birth rate ranges from 26 to 97 per cent," Os­o­time­hin added.

He said Guyana, Be­lize, Ja­maica, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da and Suri­name have the high­est teen preg­nan­cy rates in the Caribbean.


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