Medellin, Cebu - It’s been a year ago when the world stopped moving - companies shut their doors to workers, nations closed their boarders, and people were forced to stay at home and locked their doors to visitors. Due to the global COVID-19 pandemic that we are currently facing, everything seems still and unmoving. But surprisingly, the number of babies born from unprepared minor mothers are getting higher. The case of teenage pregnancy increases over time!
In one of the barangays of this sleepy town north of Cebu, an increasing number of teenage pregnancies was noted. This is not surprising as the Philippines recorded the highest teenage pregnancy rates in the ASEAN region. The Commission on Population and Development has recorded a 7% increase in births among girls aged 15 and below in 2019. Filipino minors who gave birth in 2019 increased to 62,510 from 62,341 in 2018. In 2019, 2,411 very young adolescents aged 10 to 14 gave birth, or almost seven every day. The influence of social media is a factor of these increase as now a day’s teenagers are fond of watching websites. They are curious of what they’ve seen and eager to apply it based on what they see.
Proper education to the teen age groups is necessary to impart knowledge on what are the effects of being a teenage mom to themselves and to their babies. Integration of sex education in the module is also helpful to promote awareness on what is the effect of having sex in early stage.
The increasing numbers of teenage pregnancy may contribute to increasing number of stunted children. A new study by researchers at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) published in The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health shows that children born to teenage mothers are more likely to be undernourished than children of adult mothers. The study established that stunting and underweight prevalence were 10 percentage points higher in children born to adolescent mothers than in children born to adult mothers.According to Food and Nutrition Research Institute of the Department of Science and technology, stunting has a higher prevalence rate than other forms of malnutrition, and a very challenging problem not just in the municipality of Medellin but in the entire country. // Nurse II Hazel Mae A. Monterde
