ABOUT one in two of the 2,000 Sarawakian teenagers who get pregnant yearly are between the ages of 10 and 17, revealed a recent study by the Sarawak Health Department.

According to a Health Department official, the trend shows that teenagers are getting pregnant at a younger age than before.

The study conducted last year found that 57% of the state’s pregnant teens were between 10 and 17 years old. At least 90% of them were school dropouts and half of them were not married.

Dr Mohd Nazirul Shareef Mohd Ridhwan, from the Development of Family Health section of the Health Department, said the rise in the number of pregnant teens and their younger age is worrying.

In a briefing to Sarawak’s Tourism, Arts, Culture, Youth and Sports Minister Abdul Karim Hamzah last week, Dr Nazirul estimated that one in 100 girls in Sarawak will get pregnant at least once before they reach the age of 20.

The state Health Department conducts a survey on adolescent and youth health survey each year. The 2018 figures showed a “slight increase” in the number of teenage pregnancies, bucking the trend of a decrease since 2014.

There was a 1% increase, or 23 cases, in the latest study.

Social and poverty factors

Findings from a 2012 National Health and Morbidity Survey (NHMS) also showed that teenagers in Sarawak were more sexually active than their counterparts elsewhere in the country.

The NHMS showed a 8.7% prevalence of having sex among Form One to Form Five students in the state, which was above the national average of 8.3%.

Four social scientists stated in their joint paper that contributing factors to teenage pregnancies in Sarawak were the lack of sex education, teens feeling ashamed to seek contraception services, and contraceptives were expensive or illegal for a teenager of a certain age to buy.

They reported their findings in a research paper “Potential Social Risk Factors for Teenage Pregnancy in Sarawak”, which was published in Pertanika Journal of Social Science and Humanities in March this year.

Albeny Joslyn Panting of the National Institute of Health, as well as Haslinda Abdullah, Samsilah Roslan and Ismi Arif Ismail, all of Universiti Putra Malaysia, also identified at least six social risk factors that might contribute to teenage pregnancy cases in the state.

Those social risk factors were rural-urban migration, dysfunctional family relationship, flaws in marriage customary law, alcohol and drug abuse, low awareness on sexual and reproductive health, and pornography.

Most male partners are older

In one state Health Department report, around 73% of teenage pregnancies involved their partners who were men aged between 20 and 39 years old.

The youngest underage mother in this report was 12 years old from the riverine town of Kapit.

The state Welfare, Community Wellbeing, Women, Family and Childhood Development Minister Fatimah Abdullah has said the issue is being addressed and is under control.

The state has introduced several preventive programmes at both the ministerial and state levels. It also has a special committee, the One Stop Teenage Pregnancy Committee.

It is a collaboration between various related government agencies and civil society groups to assist teens who become pregnant out of wedlock.

Dr Nazirul, however, said there was a need to strengthen awareness, knowledge and practice of positive health-related behaviours through home, school and community settings.

He said there was also a need to produce and disseminate more health education materials on risky behaviours, its consequences and preventive measures. – August 18, 2019.