Your adolescent girl isn’t ripe for marriage : Troubling statistics

According to the World Health Organisation and the United Nations Population Fund Reports 2012, over 30 per cent of adolescent girls in developing countries were married before 18 years of age; and about 14 per cent before the age of 15.

The WHO reveals that globally, about 16 million women aged 15-19 years old give birth each year, constituting about 11 per cent of all births worldwide. It notes that 95 per cent of these births occur in low- and middle-income countries, Nigeria inclusive.

“The proportion of births that take place during adolescence is more than 50 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa,” WHO notes.

Again, it says, half of all adolescent births occur in just seven countries — Bangladesh, Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria and the United States.

Experts also note that although adolescents aged 10-19 years account for 11 per cent of all births worldwide, they account for 23 per cent of the overall burden of disease due to pregnancy and childbirth.

As for Nigeria, the 2005 National HIV/AIDS and Reproductive Health Survey reveals that 73 per cent of girls between the ages of 13 and 19 years are married in the North-Eastern states of Nigeria comprising Borno, Yobe, Gongola, Adamawa and Taraba.

“The number of married adolescents in North West (Sokoto, Zamfara, Bauchi, Gombe, Kebbi and Niger); and North East  Nigeria make up about 42 per cent of the total number of Nigerian married adolescents aged 15-19, contributing an estimated 71 per cent of the annual births by Nigerians in the 15-19 age group,” the survey states.

At the 2013 Women Deliver Conference — a triennial exercise where advocacy organisations bring together voices from around the world to advocate improvement in the health and well-being of girls and women — former health minister and Executive Director, United Nations Population Fund, Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, lamented that early marriage might prevent Nigeria from successfully reducing and subsequently eradicating maternal/child mortality by 2015.

Being the Millennium Development Goals four and five respectively, the idea is for a two-thirds reduction in maternal mortality and a three-fourths reduction in child deaths by 2015.

  

Culled from Punch