Child, teen pregnancies ‘public health emergency’
A local psychiatrist says teen and child pregnancies should be treated as a public health emergency.
Dr Alicia Porter says South Africa's seeing an alarming surge in teen pregnancies.
The latest statistics have revealed shocking findings among girls as young as 10 years old.
In the last financial year, 2,716 girls aged between 10 and 14 became pregnant.
More than 122,000 teenagers gave birth during the same period.
Porter warned of the physical and mental health consequences.
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"This is early childbearing. These are children themselves; it affects their education and livelihoods. It affects their health, not just for the mother, but also I then think about the children of these teen mothers. So, it definitely has repercussions."
Porter says multi-department interventions are needed to address the crisis.
"You have to consider where they are from a developmental point of view. A 10-year-old, even from a cognitive and emotional point-of-view, is not ready to look after a child.
“Their development is disrupted. Their brains are not fully developed. Now you have a 10-year-old who can barely understand what pregnancy and birth is having to be a mother."
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