The assistant commissioner for reproductive and infant health at the ministry of Health, Dr. Richard Mugahi says if the government and Organizations advocating for girl child rights does not quickly address the existing gaps in accessing right sexual and reproductive health information among adolescents, tackling the problem of escalating of teenage pregnancies will remain difficult.
Dr. Mugahi, who was speaking during the launch of PULANIKI Mobile and Web-Based platform that has been designed to bring essential sexual and reproductive health and mental health services closer to young people has noted that teenage pregnancies has remained a major challenge in Uganda.
The recent survey by the ministry of health even before the outbreak of COVID-19 revealed that teenage pregnancies has remained stagnant at 25%. Therefore the Ministry of health is welcoming any partner or innovation that intend to bridge the access gap in terms of SHR information among adolescents. He said.
According to reports from UNICEF, A total of 354,736 teenage pregnancies were registered in 2020, and 196,499 in the first six months of 2021 at the time where all school going children were home due to COVID-19 lock-down.
The report further revealed that the high rates of teenage pregnancy can be attributed to disruption to programmes that support access to sexual reproductive health information and services to schoolgirls. Additionally, poverty has led to some parents to marry off their daughters in order to make money to survive. Analysis of data on first Antenatal Care visits from District Health Information System (DHIS-2) showed that there was a 17 percent spike in teenage pregnancies between March 2020 and June 2021.
Joyce Nakato, deputy team leader at Uganda Youth and Adolescents health forum noted that the overall goal of the newly launched PULANIKI mobile and web-based platform is to increase demand and enhance uptake for essential Sexual, Reproductive and maternal Health services and information for the urban Ugandan population by bypassing key barriers that hinder access and uptake like, stigma, discrimination, biases from health service providers among others.
The platform also seeks to increase to a wide range of choices of SRHR and maternal health services by giving clients a wide range of options and sufficient information on user descriptions to guide their decision making.
‘’With PULANIKI Mobile APP, client will be able to use the comfort of their smartphones to make online purchases of essential sexual reproductive health commodities and services like male and female condoms, self-test kits for pregnancy and HIV, contraceptive commodities among others. Joyce added.
Today, Adolescents in Uganda are confronted with life-threatening health risks related to unwanted pregnancies, HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infections. The Census report, 2016 revealed that the age at firs sexual intercourse is at 16 years and by age 18, more than 30% of adolescents are married. One in every four girls aged 15 – 19 years is already a mother or pregnant with her first child (UDHS 2016).
Teenage Pregnancy has been a global challenge for years, According to World Health Organization 2018, the adolescent birth rate in 2018 was 44 per 1000 adolescent girls aged 15 – 19 years.
