793 CHIPANGALI TEENAGERS FALL PREGNANT IN 2 MONTHS

Chipangali District has recorded seven hundred and ninety-three teenage pregnancies in just two months this year.

ZANIS reports that this came to light during an adolescent Health Technical Working Group meeting held in Chipata.

Chipangali District Commissioner, Paul Sakala, said despite the implementation of numerous adolescent health activities, the district continued recording high numbers of teenage pregnancies.

Mr. Sakala observed that in April and May this year, the district recorded 2, 427 antenatal bookings out of which, 793 were adolescents, representing 33 percent of mothers who went for antenatal clinic.

He said it was very disheartening that some of the adolescents who were pregnant were in school and others were out of school.

Mr. Sakala attributed the high number of teenage pregnancies to lack of adolescent health spaces and skills in health facilities, coupled with stock outs of commodities.

He explained that it was for this reason that the District Health office with support from global fund and peace health, was conducting trainings of adolescent peer educators and health care workers in adolescent health services in all the 22 health facilities.

Meanwhile, Chipangali District Education Board Secretary Felistus Nkholoma, said out of the ten secondary schools in the district, only two were boarding learning institutions.

Ms. Nkholoma said the other day secondary schools, pupils were doing weekly boarding where they rented houses for accommodation because their homes were far away from school.

She said the arrangement made female pupils vulnerable to early pregnancies because there was no control of them after they knocked off from school.

Ms. Nkoloma noted that there was need to construct boarding facilities in most schools so that movements of female pupils were monitored.

And Chipangali Town Council Secretary, Francis Ndola, said communities should see the challenge pupils were facing, adding that, they needed to prioritize construction of boarding facilities whenever they were applying for Constituency Development Funds in some wards.

Mr. Ndola said through decentralization, government gave powers to the grassroots to identify problems and work on them.