We need to do more to address adolescent pregnancy

Maphisa district hospital broke the record in 2019 when a 12 year old girl delivered a baby. The community and authorities were left tongue tied by this unusual incident. But the question that we should ask is was it really unusual?

One cannot help but wonder what happened to the poor girl, who is now 14, especially with the rise of the Covid 19 pandemic. Who knows maybe the girl, a child herself, is struggling with raising her baby. This goes to show how disruptive teenage pregnancies are.

Adolescent pregnancy has detrimental consequences for example, dropping out of school, depression, forced marriage, clandestine abortions and poverty. Sadly, ever since the Covid 19 induced lockdown began, the rate of teenage pregnancy increased drastically.

Talking to the Matobo Community Magazine, Dr Mathew Mthunzi, the Matobo District Medical Officer, had this to say; “Teenage pregnancy is quite high in our region. In 2019 the hospital received 69 girls and 73 girls in 2020.”

According to a government report nearly 5000 teenagers were impregnated in January and February 2021 alone, while nearly 1800 succumbed to early child marriages.

Dr Mthunzi highlighted that some of the teenage pregnancies are unplanned and are results of rape or driven by poverty.

He indicated that some women delay in seeking medical attention after rape which increases their risk to sexually transmitted diseases and infections and making it dangerous to terminate the unwanted pregnancy.

“By law women who get pregnant due to rape are permitted to come to hospital and be assisted by professionals in terminating pregnancy but, in this case victims come late hence it would be dangerous to do so,” said Dr Mthunzi.

The Doctor stressed the need to raise awareness about Sexual Reproductive Health Rights (SRHR), Gender Based Violence (GBV) and family planning among the young people.

He urged community leaders to engage the hospital in combating the scourges, as the hospital offers assistance in that area.

“From my experience as a doctor, I feel like the gospel of Sexual Reproductive Health Rights, Gender Based Violence and family planning has not yet been preached properly, there is still need for us to educate more on that and raise awareness to the youths about gender based violence [GBV], intimate partner violence and teenage pregnancy,” said Dr Mthunzi.

“Having said that, the hospital has a responsibility of offering SRHR services hence we partner with the organization like Zimbabwe Health Interventions (ZHI) and Organizations for Public Health and Development (OPHID) and implement governmental programs. It would be better if the village heads and community worked hand in hand with the officials in helping reduce crime of rape,” he said.

Dr Mthunzi says if we could work together as a community we can reduce rape cases and unplanned pregnancies. We need to work together as a collective and spread the word of abstinence, protection and sexual reproductive health rights.