Dr. Sunil Mehra, MD
Executive Director, MAMTA Health Institute for Mother and Child
I remember speaking in UNGASS on children in early 2002 that
child marriage and child pregnancy (Adolescent Pregnancy) is the worst form of
child rights violation. How can a child give birth to a child? And Child
‘Labor’ is the worst form of labour. No developed society can rest on laurels
if these pregnancies continue to happen within child marriages and outside.
Just released report of Save the Children is very
gratifying. India contributed significantly to global reduction in teenage
pregnancy almost contributing to three fourth reduction in global teenage
births. The report goes on to state that the global reduction is almost around
2 million births since 2000 (3.5 million vs 1.4 million). This reduction augurs
well for country’s Maternal and Child health. We know that Adolescent
pregnancies still contribute to a great extent to Adolescent deaths and in turn
to overall Maternal Mortality. Not only this, adolescent pregnancy
significantly contributes to premature and low birth weight babies, resulting
in infant and U 5 Child mortality and morbidity (besides contributing to non-communicable
disease in long run - a burden we are facing now).
It’s not a coincidence that the child marriage in India also
showed a reasonable decline (although still unacceptably high) from 47.5
(2005-06, NFHS-3) to 26.8 (2015-16, NFHS – 4). This decline significantly
contributed to reduction in teenage pregnancy. The challenge is that we have no
authentic data on teenage pregnancy in unmarried adolescents. With declining
child marriages comes the issues of Adolescent sexuality and sexual behaviour
which if not adequately addressed through age appropriate information and
knowledge would result in unwanted pregnancies, abortion and various other
infections besides mental health issues.
While we continue to work towards reducing teenage
pregnancies by “eliminating” child marriages and promoting modern contraceptive
(read as spacing methods) in young and low parity couples; we need
comprehensive sexuality education for our adolescents. This is critical and
imperative. We need appropriate platform in schools and within families to
provide scientifically correct information to our adolescents. They are our
children we have a duty to provide them quality care and information. Let’s
keep up our efforts in reducing teenage pregnancy and MAMTA Health Institute
for Mother and Child which has been in the lead and working dedicatedly on this
for last two decades will further intensifies its efforts towards this.
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