Thursday, March 28, 2024

Reducing teenage pregnancy should be a national agenda-PPAZ

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The Planned Parenthood Association has called for the scaling up political will in reducing teenage pregnancies in the country.

PPAZ Executive Director Edford Mutuma said reducing teenage pregnancies should be a national agenda.
An average of 17,600 young girls drop out of school per year in Zambia, a country with a fertility rate as high as 6.2 and maternal mortality still at 591 per 100,000 live births.

Mr Mutuma said young girls should be valued as a virtue and government should take the lead to ensure that our young girls complete their education and are inspired to be economically empowered.

The PPAZ Executive Director noted that as long as women are still dropping out of school and dying, it will be very difficult for Zambia to inspire to realise Vision 2030.

He said teenage pregnancy is a menace to our society adding that ending it is a struggle that needs to receive as much attention and focus as the struggle against HIV.

Mr Mutuma said politicians should use their strategic advantage to take up this issue seriously.
He said this in a statement ahead of this year’s International Women’s Day which falls on Saturday, August 08 2014 under the theme ‘Inspiring Change’.

“As we celebrate this year’s International Women’s Day, women in Zambia need to be inspired to be equal partners in the overall national development which also includes reducing the number of women who die during pregnancy and childbirth and also due to unsafe abortions,” Mr Mutuma said.

He said the key factors that need to be considered in this inspiration are the promotion of gender equality, investment in sexual and reproductive health and rights, increase political will, ensure adequate financing and encourage men involvement in women inspiring change.

“Gender equality and investing in sexual and reproductive health and rights are essential for growth and poverty reduction as they are key to reaching our National Development Goals including the MDGs, however, gender inequalities are still entrenched in many of our Zambian cultural, social and political systems,” he said.

He added, “We need to see more investment in family planning and reproductive health for our women especially those in hard to reach areas. This will significantly save lives and create hope for our women.”

“In this regard, the government has put in strong mechanism that ensures the access to services for our rural community however; this should be matched with investing in human resources, improving health infrastructure and demand creation for health services.”

Mr Mutuma said Zambian men should take up the challenge to support women adding that this is the only way the country is going to have meaningful improvement in the promotion of gender equality.

“We want men as Agents of Change, men as promoters of gender equality and supporters of women’s health. We need men who will break the silence and the social norms to improve conditions for women.

Who are the women behind the maternal mortality statistics? They’re our mothers, wives, sisters, daughters and friends. Men have to completely change their attitude to improve the women status in Zambia,” he added.

3 COMMENTS

  1. Educate the entire nation by starting with parents , fathers and mothers speaking to their children on various topics concerning Sex education so that even before they go out side, they can be well equiped to make up there own mind.
    Just read somewhere today how girls in Malawi are married off at the age of 10 for food or money. So as far as I know this issue can not be easily tackled just like that in this todzys complicated world. Besides this computer age is very tricky more effort is need in order to help bring down pregnancy numbers.

  2. REMEMBER: KANSAPATO KAMWANA.

    YOU WILL GO TO JAIL FOR A VERY LONG PERIOD.

    BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU ENGAGE IN.

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