Teenage health centres are calling on government to actively participate and support them if the youth are to know more about reproductive health.
Uganda has one of the highest teenage pregnancies in Africa. By age 15, at least 24 percent of girls and 10 percent of boys are sexually active yet only 11 percent of sexually active young people are using contraception. According to UNICEF, 16 percent of adolescents ages 15 to 19 have given birth before the age of 18, while 35 percent of women ages 20 to 24 have given birth.
Stephen Sserumaga Mungi, the coordinator Kawempe Health Centre in Kawempe Division in Kampala, says government has done little to provide information on teenage reproductive health. Sexually active teenagers at the centre are encouraged to use family planning, practice abstinence and use condoms.
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According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in Uganda, the contraceptive prevalence rate among adolescents is 11 percent. Statistics also show that there is more than a 33 percent unmet need for family planning among young people.
The Kawempe youth centre opened in 1998 and has since been working with young people through their peers. The information sharing focuses on behavioral change communication and advice on future aspirations.
Sserumaga says they can only reach those who attend the meetings and through outreach programmes in Kawempe when they have resources. Even though the centre is located at a Health Centre, Sserumaga says some teenagers particularly come for non-medical advice.
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According to a 2008 Guttmacher Institute report, Protecting the Next Generation in Uganda: New Evidence on Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health Needs, only 33.8 percent girls and 22 percent boys aged between 12 and 14 years have received sex education in school.
21 year Stephen Nkugwa, a student at Kyambogo University, says he comes to Kawempe youth centre regularly because of the discussions on sex. Nkugwa, who is sexually active, says he was caught up in a dilemma when he had a teenage girlfriend who was cheating on him.
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At the Naguru Teenage Information and Health Centre, the largest in Uganda, the message is not any different. The Programme Director, Peter Mpinga, says they group teenagers according to age and the information provided depends on the issue presented by the young person.
Mpinga explains that sex talk becomes elaborate only if the teenager is sexually active. However, they face challenges such as conflicting messages from leaders on family planning.
Mpinga notes that it’s a disservice for them to advise the teenagers to have small families when President Yoweri Museveni is talking about Uganda’s vast land which needs larger families to make use of it.
Mpinga also says religious leaders discredit condom and family control pill use among the teenagers yet many are sexually active. The situation is also worsened by teenage use of the internet which gives them misleading information on issues such as homosexuality yet government is against it.
Mpinga says when they visit schools where homosexuality is practiced; they fail to advise the teenagers accordingly and just tell them to follow what their faith says.
Uganda today joined the rest of the world to mark the International Population Day under the theme, Make Access to Reproductive Health Services a Priority: Address Key Challenges.
According to UNFPA, some 222 million women, or one in every six women of reproductive age, who want to delay or cease childbearing lack effective modern contraceptives. Substantial proportions of women in every country—more than 50 percent in some—say their last birth was unintended or mistimed.
