Teenage pregnancy is when a woman under the age of 20 gets pregnant. It usually refers to teens between 15 -19 years, but it can also include girls as young as 10. At this age, the risk factors associated with the pregnancy are many, ranging from high blood pressure (preeclampsia), premature birth and low birth weight. Preeclampsia can harm the kidneys, cause miscarriage or fatal to both mother and child. A child having a baby as a teenager is more likely to face critical social challenges like poverty, poor education, poor health and child welfare.
The Uganda vision 2040 envisages that today’s young people will be the drivers to achieve the vision target of a transformed society from the predominantly peasant to a modern and prosperous country within 30 years. It is therefore important that clear interventions are made to ensure the aspirations set out in vision 2040 are realized, with harnessing of the demographic dividend (DD) as one of the strategies to attain the vision targets. The third national development plan (NDP111) through the Human capital development programme, seeks to achieve different targets that include, reduction of teenage pregnancy rate from 25% in 2016 to 15%, increase average years of schoolingfrom 6.1 to 11 years, increase learning adjusted years of schooling from 4.5 to 7 years. Reduce prevalence of under-five stunting from 28% to 19%.
Reduction of neonatal mortality rate from 27/1000 live births to 19/1000, reduce under 5 mortality from 64/1000 live births to 42/1000. Maternal mortality rate from 336/100000 to 211/100000. Reduce unmet need of family planning from 28 to 10% and increase contraceptive prevalence rate (CPR) FROM 35% to 50%, reduce mortality due to the non–communicable diseases from 40% to 30%. Reduced mortality due to high-risk communicable diseases like TB and HIV (AIDS) from 60% to 30%. The overall goal of the human capital development programme is improving productivity of labour for increased competitiveness and better quality of life for all.
In the execution of the NDP111, it is imperative to note that there is a low access to adolescent health friendly services and inadequate disease monitoring leading to high teenage pregnancies. The adolescent health policy guidelines and service standards require that productive health services include promotive, preventive, curative and rehabilitative care for adolescents. To achieve the demographic dividend (DD) strategy, we must ensure that adolescents are healthy, educated and well skilled. This can only be achieved if the fertility rate is reduced, through delayed marriage and childbirth by keeping them long in school, build careers, create wealth and transform the age structure over time.
The status findings indicate that teenage pregnancies contribute 20% of the infant deaths and 28% of maternal deaths in Uganda. Teenage pregnancy is responsible for about 18% of the annual births in Uganda, 46% of which were unwanted. Teenage mothers are six times less likely to complete education than the normal mothers are. When teenagers get pregnant, the education path is cut short and it becomes a challenge to get back to school with a child to take care of.
In 2020, families of teenage mothers spent UGx1.28trillion on sexual reproductive health services and the estimated healthy facility expenditure on teenage mothers was UGx246.9billion, equivalent to 43%of the ministry of health budget of 2020/21. The per capita reproductive health expenditure i.e. which each teenage mother spends is UGX 1million on herself and the baby’s health care. The expected health care and education savings at a macro-level indicates that if the current teenage pregnancy rate is reduced from 25% to 10%, as targeted in the current health sector development plan, then each year about half of the health expenditure for teenage mothers will be saved equivalent to UGX592billion and the per capita health care expenditure will reduce from 280 USD to 105 USD.
High teenage pregnancy is a huge drawback to achieving the development goals as envisaged in national roadmap to harness the demographic dividend. To get the desired goal, firm and deliberate steps must be taken. There is need to improve access to sexual and reproductive health information and adolescent-friendly services and ensure that health care providers are skilled to offer non-judgmental service
In conclusion, for all this to actualize, there is need for a multi-pronged approach intended to pull together policies in societies and a legal framework to address the causes of teenage pregnancy and its effects in society.
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