The Minister of State for Children Affairs, Sarah Mateke, has reaffirmed that the government does not plan to implement a policy that encourages teenage girls to use contraceptives.
She made this statement while addressing journalists at the Uganda Media Center on Wednesday, ahead of the International Day of the Girl Child. The minister clarified that an official at the Ministry of Health, Dr. Olaro Charles, was quoted out of context when he proposed a policy to provide contraceptives to girls to address the issue of teenage pregnancy.
Dr. Olaro Charles, the Director of Curative Services at the Ministry of Health, had suggested lowering the age for family planning access in response to the high rate of teenage pregnancies and early marriages, where young girls were often married off to much older men. However, this suggestion had not become an official government policy.
Minister Mateke emphasized that the government does not support the idea of providing contraceptives to young girls because they believe contraceptives are intended for mature individuals. She clarified that the proposal was a suggestion to address the issue of increased teenage pregnancies but was not endorsed as government policy.
The Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Thomas Tayebwa, also voiced his opposition to the proposed plan by the Ministry of Health to allow young girls as young as 15 years old to access contraceptives, including condoms, implants, birth control pills, and other family planning methods.
He believed that endorsing birth control for teenagers in a predominantly religious country like Uganda would be seen as sanctioning sexual violence. Tayebwa stated that such a policy would be equivalent to legitimizing defilement and implied a failure on the part of the nation to protect its youth. He expressed his hope that these ideas would not be implemented, saying, “That is formalizing defilement. That is clearly saying we have failed. We would rather strengthen monitoring to ensure that we fight this vice but not legitimize it by providing such services, and I am glad it isn’t yet a policy.”