Naguru Teenage Information and Health Centre (NTIHC), with support from the United Nations Populations Fund (UNFPA) engaged media practitioners allover the country to highlight actions aimed at addressing Sexual Gender-Based Violence and teenage pregnancy.
The event was graced by representatives from the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development, National Population council, and others on 23rd September 2022 at Golf Course Hotel.
Dr. Rogers Ampwera, the Executive Director of NTHIC noted that the Media has a big role in influencing change in the communities they live in.
“Since 2001, we have been engaging media on their role in influencing, advocating, increasing awareness and sensitizing communities about issues that affect young people, ” he said.
Highlighting the Centre’s contribution towards ending teenage pregnancy, Dr. Ampwera noted that for the past 27 years, they have been serving young people with quality responsive sexual reproductive health and rights services, he explained,
“Our model of youth friendly services is to make sure that it’s a one-stop Centre, when a young person walks in whether they have flue or fever, our job is to make sure that we take them on, counsel them and identify any other issue affecting them.”
Sam Asiimwe Mugalura Programs Manager at NTIHC remarked,
“As a teenage center, we look forward to strengthening partnerships with the media houses, so that we can identify the challenges together, probe the solutions going forward so that we can do better as providers, policy makers to ensure that we stem this challenge of teenage pregnancy.”
Teenage pregnancy; A major problem in Uganda.
According to the Uganda Demographic Health Survey 2016, 1 in every 4 girls aged 15-19 years have begun childbearing, while 12% of girls aged between 10-19 years are married.
Nonetheless, there were 212 adolescent girls and young women between 15-24 who become HIV-positive each week in Uganda, representing 29% of all new infections, according to the Uganda AIDS Commission 2021 Fact Sheet; Ministry of Health 2020 estimates.
Anne Alan Sizomu, Programme Specialist- Adolescent and Youth SRH at UNFPA noted that teenagers contribute more than a quarter of the mothers who are dying due to pregnancy, or child birth related issues.
“So, one of the game changers we need to do in order to reduce the maternal mortality rate in Uganda is to address the issue of teenage pregnancy, ” she added.
Meanwhile, Dr. Betty Kyadondo, Director of Family Health at National Population Council (NPC) re-echoed that keeping girls in school reduces teenage pregnancies. Adding, “Non teenage mothers are six times more likely to complete senior four than teenage mothers. Furthermore, only 5% of the teenage mothers are employed in professional professions, and about half of the teenage pregnancies are peasants in subsistence agriculture.
“If no action is taken, teenage pregnancy will continue with 50% of teenagers at risk, and about 64% teen mothers will not complete primary education level. Also, about 60% of teen mothers will end up in peasant agriculture work,” Betty Kyadondo, Director of Family Health at National Population Council (NPC) noted.
She added that annually, more than 645b Shs (184m USD) will be spent on health care for teen mothers and education of their children.
Media practitioners speak out.
For effective dissemination of information, media actors developed actions that should be adopted. These among others included; provision of reporting guides, progressive training of media practitioners, offering grants and awards, sharing interesting content among others.
Benjamin Jumbe, a news anchor and editor at KFM noted that sharing vital information regarding policies, strategies targeting sexual and reproductive health of young people at all levels will minimize cases of misreporting.
“If key stakeholders like the media are not update with the development of the strategies, then we have a challenge. Because, the media is going to have mixed information about the subject. There should be better coordination between the key players,” he said.
Madrine Nabukeera noted that partnerships between the civil society and community structures should be strengthened, especially at family level.
“Because, in my experience in the documentation side, parents still look at their children as innocent, but we have to acknowledge the fact that adolescents are engaging in unsafe sex. The more we play safe and live in denial, we shall fail to address the problem of teenage pregnancy.
So there should be interventions to engage the communities even at family level to address the problem other than doing the damage control,” she said.
