14 Mar 2013

There was a slight decrease in teenage pregnancies in 2012 when compared to the previous year, Jwaneng district AIDS coordinator, Mrs Stella Keipeile has said

Last year, she said, teenage pregnancies made 10.3 per cent of all pregnancies registered in health facilities in the district, while in 2011 the same amounted to 12 per cent.

Speaking at the town’s Candle Light Memorial event, which formed part of the Month of Youth Against AIDS, Mrs Keipeile nonetheless said the slight decrease did not mean that the district had achieved its goal.

She noted that teenage pregnancies should be avoided at all costs because they came with negative consequences, which adversely affected the lives of teenage mothers and their families.

“Teenage pregnancies result in school drop outs, single parenting and serious health risks for the young mother as well as sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS,” she explained.

She encouraged parents to communicate openly about sexual health with their children so that they could get proper information and avoid teenage pregnancies. She said if parents were ashamed to communicate then children would get wrong information from their peers.

 Additionally, the AIDS coordinator urged attendants to take responsibility for their health and get tested for HIV. She urged TB patients to test for HIV because in most cases the two ailments were related.

She noted that the Jwaneng district’s TB/HIV co-infection rate stood at 64 per cent, a number which she said was too high for a country whose aim was to achieve zero infection.

She also decried lack of adherence to medication by HIV positive people, saying their attitude made a big dent in government’s coffers because they had to be enrolled in line two of the ARV programme, which was more expensive.

For his part, Jwaneng town clerk, Mr Dick Kalantle said behavioural change was key to achieving zero HIV infections.

She advised young people to be cautions of factors that contributed to them contracting the virus and take responsibility for their lives. “We should preserve ourselves for a better future,” he said.

He noted that as the future leaders, young people could only be alive tomorrow if they managed the way they lived currently. This, he noted could be achieved by controlling their feelings and taking control of their lives.

Mr Kalantle said Multi-Concurrent Partnerships (MCPs) was one of the contributory factors to the high HIV prevalence and therefore both the youth and adults to desist from such. ENDS