High adolescent pregnancies in the Caribbean

Barbados and other Caribbean countries are significantly affected by unintended pregnancies, says Director Representative of the UNFPA Sub-Regional Office for the Caribbean Alison Drayton.

Delivering opening remarks at the virtual Youth Round Table Talk: How Do Unintended Pregnancies Affect me?, on Tuesday, Drayton said 20 000 girls in developing countries under the age of 18 give birth every day, amounting to 7.3 million births per year.

“If all pregnancies are included, not just births, the number of adolescent pregnancies is much higher. In the Caribbean 69 per cent of the countries have an adolescent birthrate above 40 births per 1000 girls age 15 to 19.

“This is well above the estimated global average for middle income countries which is 37.1. So our region is leading unfortunately with nearly twice the global average for middle income countries,” she said.

Drayton said this fact has been highlighted in the 2022 State of the World Population (SWOP) Report in the Caribbean, titled Seeing the unseen: the case for action in the negative crisis of unintended pregnancies.

Drayton said the report also highlights that contraception is the most obvious way to prevent unintended pregnancies.

She said that while all methods of contraception can fail, especially if used incorrectly, the biggest issue is people not having access to the contraception that they need when they need it.

“I would note that in the Caribbean this is a particular issue for young people, male and female, because almost in every country it is not possible for young people below 18 to access family planning services and this would include not only methods to prevent pregnancies, but even advice.

“Given the sad state of discussions on issues relating to sexuality in our schools, we have young people who get pregnant not even knowing how it happened and this is not a small problem,” she said.

Drayton added that the SWOP report further highlighted that globally, around 257 million who want to avoid pregnancy are not using safe modern methods of contraception. Furthermore, among the group, 172 million are using no method at all.

“This is compounded by the fact that there are many myths around the use of contraceptives,” she said. (AH)