We need concerted effort to curb teenage pregnancies

The schools closure due to the Covid-19 pandemic has bred more problems than just discontinuity in the learning process. 

The schools system apart from enabling systemic formal and informal education also in a way protects children from societal ills and elements who prey on unsuspecting and impressionable young people. It also protects them from themselves.

It has been proven that keeping children in school to a large extent wards off early marriage and teenage pregnancies. Schools are a kind of sanctuary for learners and keeps them busy and preoccupied. 

Of course it would be foolhardy to say that teenage pregnancies have surged only because of schools closure but it does have a strong bearing on the situation at hand. 
 On Wednesday, September 1, we published a story about high teenage pregnancy rates in districts across West Nile Sub-region. 

(High teenage pregnancy rates worry leaders)
In the story, Mr Peter Data Taban, the Adjumani resident district commissioner, reveals that there are now 143 recorded cases of teenage pregnancy, 175 cases of girls who got married underage and another 1,707 girls who dropped out before the closure of schools. 

Taban attributes these trends to poor parenting, and other leaders point to alcoholism and substance abuse, noncompliance among the sub-county and village authorities and lack of sexuality education. 

While all the above reasons contribute to the surge in teenage pregnancies and not just in West Nile but in the whole country, the continued schools closure simply exacerbates an already volatile situation.

This is no longer news as the shocking numbers of teenage pregnancies have been published over and over again for all to see. 

Therefore, let us not stop at listing the unfortunate statistics of teenage pregnancies and what might or might not be escalating them. 

We must now think deeply on what this means for our future as a country and then set to make it right by finding actionable ways to change this unfortunate trend.  

Even if it should be common sense, parents and local leaders must be continually sensitised about their mandate to protect minors in their care, let’s continually discourage cultural beliefs that promote child marriage, and provide appropriate sexuality education to young people. It will take collective responsibility to reverse these numbers.   

And even if it does not entirely solve the problem, hopefully schools would be opened soon and learners kept busy rather than left to wander aimlessly about making them vulnerable to not only teenage pregnancies but other unfortunate occurrences. It is still true after all that an idle mind is the devil’s workshop.