Teenage pregnancy on the rise
Gothataone Moeng | Monday December 2, 2013 15:02
UNFPA’s state of the world population report of 2013, has noted that in 2011, Botswana recorded a 39 primary school students dropped out due to pregnancy, while in the same year 453 dropped out of both junior and secondary schools. Last year there was an increase to 2013. As at September 2013, pregnancies in secondary schools had already exceeded 50, with 21 cases being reported in the two secondary schools in Nata.
Launching the UNFPA report, which is subtitled ‘Motherhood in Childhood: Facing the Challenge of Adolescent Pregnancy’, Minister of Education and Skills Development (MoESD) Pelonomi Venson-Moitoi reiterated the widespread effects of an adolescent pregnancy.
'Adolescent pregnancy brings detrimental social and economic consequences for the girl, her family, her community and the nation at large. Many girls who become pregnant drop out of school, drastically limiting their future opportunities,' she said.
Kabelo Poloko, Programs Director at Botswana Family Welfare Association (BOFWA), says the biggest factor to teenage and unwanted pregnancies is a lack of use of family planning methods. Although it provides several services, the key mandate for BOFWA is still to make it easier for young people (ages 10-35) to gain access to various family planning methods. Through their youth friendly clinics, the organisation hopes to provide services specific to the young person, and a place at which young people will not be stigmatised or shamed for wanting or needing sexual reproductive health services. However, even though the organisation purports to be national, it only has five youth friendly clinics, located in Gaborone, Mochudi, Kanye, Kasane and Maun.
BOFWA nurse/midwife Senzeni Makhwaje, who is based in the Kasane clinic, says this is not an impediment as the organisation works in partnership with the government through the Ministry of Health (MoH). All government facilities provide for family planning, she says, and there are outreach programmes for hard-to reach areas.
'Family planning is very much available for all young people across the country,' she said.
However, according to Poloko, various factors still hinder the availability and accessibility of family planning methods to young people. For one, the BOFWA youth friendly clinics operate weekdays between 8am to 5pm.
'It is something that we have discussed,' Poloko told Mmegi. 'We have realised that we probably need to extend our hours of operation, because during those hours young people are either at work or in schools, leading to some of our centres being under-utilised.' Moreover, as Poloko said, the organisation is not visible and still needs to do much more to market its services.
But the greatest obstacle is the misconceptions about the use of many family planning methods.
'There are a lot of issues around young people accessing these kind of commodities, a lot of people still have misconceptions about them, and they feel that the pill will make them gain weight, or give them pimples. Young people rely on condoms which are not entirely reliable due to inconsistent and incorrect use,' he said.
Consequently, the uptake for other forms of family planning, such as the injection, the pill and the IUCD is still way below that of the male condom, he said.
But even condoms are not sure-fire methods, as sometimes issues of the quality of the condom get in the way of the condom being used. That is the case with the government- supplied Lorato condom, Poloko said.
'What we have found out is that a lot of young people are not confident of using the govt-supplied condoms, which is Lorato. When the condom was first introduced into the market, there was widespread speculation and reports about how easy Lorato is to burst, and this affected the public confidence in usage of the brand. Young people take it because it is the only condom available here, but we cannot be sure if they use it,' Poloko said.
He said a possible solution is to re-brand the condoms, so they can appeal to young people, something Poloko says they have been engaging government on for the last two years.
'The arguments sometimes is that the condoms break because young people don't know how to use them, but the truth is if somebody tells you they don't want something, they don't want it,' he said.
Also, young people who are on family planning still need to contend with shortage of commodities, which sometimes necessitates a change of method. BOFWA gets its supplies from government, so when there is a shortage, it is national and both government and non-government organisation facilities are out.
On the issue of whether family planning methods should be made available in schools, Poloko says there is no denying the fact that young people are sexually active, whether they are in or out of schools. But to him, the first port of action is to strengthen sexual reproductive health education.
'My belief is that we need to strengthen and develop a comprehensive sexual reproductive health, before promoting access to commodities. We need to teach young people life-skills. We need to first build this young person up by informing them, so that by the time they start having sex, they are empowered. We need to teach them the implications and risks of engaging in sexual activities at a young age,' he said.
Makhwanje said the general consensus within the Botswana community is that students in primary and junior secondary schools should be provided with sexual reproductive health education, while those in senior secondary schools can be availed family planning products.
For the UNFPA, preventing adolescent pregnancy should be a human rights issue. In the 2013 report, the organisation states that although many countries have taken action aimed at preventing adolescent pregnancy, many of the measures have been about changing the behaviour of girls, failing to address the underlying issues such as gender inequality, poverty, sexual violence as well as neglecting to take into account the role of boys and girls. Further, the report states that many of the actions by governments and civil society that have reduced adolescent fertility were designed to achieve other objectives such as keeping girls in schools and preventing HIV infections.