Ministry of Health & Environment

		PRINT THIS			SEND TO A FRIEND

Adolescents remain in the group most at risk for suffering a maternal death or maternal complications. According to Deputy Representative of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) for the English and Dutch speaking Caribbean, Jaime Nadal-Roig, adolescents are less likely to seek healthcare when pregnant.

"Only 10 per cent, according to international data, are consistently and properly using contraception when indulging in sexual relationships and are less prepared to have children," he told JIS News, noting that it is a case of children having children.

Maternal death as defined by the World Health Organisation (WHO) is the death of a woman during pregnancy or within 42 days after the termination of a pregnancy, irrespective of the duration and site of the pregnancy. It is caused or aggravated by the pregnancy or its management and is therefore not a death that is accidentally or incidentally caused.

Adolescents, he further added, are also at a higher risk for gender based violence and domestic violence and as such, these factors make adolescents a higher risk for maternal death or maternal conditions.

In the case of Jamaica, Reproductive Health Epidemiologist, Professor Affette McCaw-Binns, citing a 2002 report, said that where one in six women described their pregnancies as unwanted, adolescents did not call their pregnancies unwanted but mistimed.

"They are curious and they want to know if they are fecund and that they can have children, so there is this social pressure on them to prove that they are not mules," Professor McCaw-Binn pointed out.

In addition, where adolescents and women have unwanted pregnancies, the Professor said they do not seek antenatal care. In fact, they show up at either the hospital or the health centre at 36 to 38 weeks pregnant. As a result, Professor McCaw-Binns said that members of the health team are asked to create miracles.

"What we want is that every pregnancy is wanted and every pregnancy is planned, so that women seek appropriate care in a timely fashion and do what is necessary to keep themselves and their babies alive," she emphasized.

Society, she added, has "a very strange way in responding," when adolescents become pregnant and this is not usually in a positive way. "How the society responds to and supports the young adolescents who have the unwanted and unintended pregnancies is an important issue and as a society, we must deal with this," she urged.

In light of this, Dr. McCaw-Binns said it has become necessary for sex education at the earliest stage, because the average age of sexual debut is 14 years. "They need to learn about sex education when they are 11 or 12 years before they become pubescent, so that they know that abstention is the appropriate response to their hormones and that they need to find other ways to get rid of that energy," she stressed.

Continuing, she said while adolescents would always explore their sexuality, there were safer ways to do so, which included access to family planning methods and using it safely every single time there is an act of sexual intercourse, if the intention is not to have a baby.

Women who have a high number of children without the necessary spacing in between pregnancies are another group at high risk for suffering a maternal death or maternal conditions. Proper spacing is every two years.

"If women do so, then they give their bodies a chance to recover and the risks will be reduced. Good spacing can be facilitated by using appropriate family planning methods. As women have more children, the chances that they will have more complications, especially from problems like haemorrhaging is greater," Professor McCaw-Binns said.

Jamaica's current maternal mortality rate is 95 deaths in every 100,000 live births.

		PRINT THIS			SEND TO A FRIEND