Nearly 350 000 girls between the ages of 10 and 19 fell pregnant between 2019 and 2022 in Zimbabwe.
This was said by United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Zimbabwe’s adolescent sexual health reproductive specialist Blessing Nyagumbo on Tuesday.
Addressing journalists, Nyagumbo said the country recorded a sharp increase in pregnancies among girls and teenagers in the past three years. She said, as quoted by ZimLive:
Between 2019 and 2022, there were about 1.7 million pregnancies recorded in Zimbabwe and out of that, 21 percent happened amongst adolescents that are between the ages of 10 to 19 years and that translates to around 350 000 teenage pregnancies.
That tells you how devastating the rate of teenage pregnancies in Zimbabwe is.
According to statistics, in 2018, about 3 000 girls dropped out because of pregnancy.
In 2019, the number remained relatively steady, but in 2020, the number rose to 4 770.
In 2021, the number rose again as about 5 000 learners got pregnant in that year’s first two months.
Nyagumbo said it is imperative to take sexual reproductive health education to schools as raising awareness will reduce cases of sexual exploitation of minors. She said:
One of the preventing strategic interventions that we support as UNFPA is strengthening the delivery of sex education in schools.
Teenage pregnancies and child marriages skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic when schools were closed for an extended period of time.
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