Kakaire A. Kirunda
3 July 2006
Mbale — A fact sheet with statistics on Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health (ASRH) in Mbale has been in circulation over the last couple of weeks,
The data was compiled by the Mbale ASRH Advocacy Team, which is a consortium of various stakeholders including the district local government.
According to the ASRH statistics, 52 percent of Mbale's 345,000 people are between 10 - 24 years of age. Thirty three percent of Mbale's teenage girls are mothers or pregnant. By the age of 24, the average school dropout in Mbale will have 4-6 children. By 16, she/he will have two.
The figures also show that out of the 99/1,000 infant mortalities that occur yearly in Mbale, two thirds occur to adolescent mothers, and out of the 2,100 women who die due to pregnancy complications, a quarter are teenagers.
On HIV, two out of every three adolescents with a positive sero status in the district are female. In what is even more heart breaking, out of the 2,800 persons living with HIV/Aids in Mbale, two thirds are teenagers.
And in the face of all this, less than one out of three in-school adolescents in the district have ever sought ASRH services.
"Can't we do any better Mbale?" The ASRH advocacy Team posed the question on its fact sheet, followed with a plea," Save your children: Support exclusive finding for ASRH in the 2006/7 district budget."
Efforts to make sense out of all these statistics from the district medical authorities yielded nothing. But, "the figures speak for themselves," noted a reproductive health expert attached to one of the hospitals in the district, on condition of anonymity. "This is a serious crisis that requires urgent solutions."
In the 2006/7 district budget read out recently, slightly over Shs2 billion was allocated to the health sector, but efforts to find out how much would go to ASRH have up to date proved futile.
None-the-less, facilitating at a recent Journalist-to-Journalist Reproductive Training Programme in Nairobi, Dr Richard D. Muga of Kenya's National Coordinating Agency for population and Development, offered possible solutions to ASRH problems in Sub-Saharan Africa.
"Encourage parents to actively involve themselves in adolescent reproductive health issues. Train more peer educators to reach out to the adolescents. Provide integrated health services," Muga wrote in his paper, Adolescent Reproductive Health.
He called for the establishment of adolescent friendly services and increased women's education and creation of jobs.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2006 The Monitor. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
