Teenage pregnancy rising

The number of teenage pregnancies in Namibia are increasing rapidly, Namibian news reports said on Thursday.
Reports quoted Namibian President Sam Nujoma as saying that by the age of 19, 45 percent of Namibian girls already had one or more children. Quoting figures from the Namibian Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS), Nujoma said that 2 percent of 15-year-old girls also fell pregnant annually.

Nujoma blamed the grim statistics on health services which were generally “inaccessible to adolescents”. He said that there was also a lack of educative material related to sexuality, contraceptives, the risk of early pregnancies and unsafe abortions.

In its recent ‘Progress of Nations 2000’ report, UNICEF said that when an adolescent became pregnant her health and that of her baby were threatened. “Children of adolescent mothers are more likely to be born under weight and to die within the first month of life compared to those whose mothers are older. If they survivor the first month, these children are still more likely to die before their fifth birthday,” UNICEF said. It added that early sexual activity drastically increased the risk of contracting HIV/AIDS.