Girl Child Education and Early Pregnancies

Teenage pregnancy is a serious problem in Uganda that is putting the lives of young girls in danger and particularly those in my community in Kitgum District, Northern Uganda.

According to statistics from the Uganda Bureau of Statistics, 25% of teenagers normally give birth by the age of 18, leaving Uganda to have a maternal mortality rate of 336 per 100,000 live births (down from over 400) with 17% of those deaths among girls aged 15 – 19 years of age. This adds up to around 700 teenage girls dying in childbirth each year. The number of teenage pregnancies spiked during Covid-19 so there were even more deaths.

Another Study still carried out in Uganda also found that “a total of 354,736 teenage pregnancies were registered in 2020, while 295,219 teenage pregnancies were registered between January to early September 2021. This implies that on average, over 32,000 teenage pregnancies are recorded per month. This is because most parents believe that sending girls to school is wastage of resources since there is a myth believed by so many in my community that a girl will either drops out of school and gets married before completing school or will complete school and gets married to a man and so all the benefits of her education and career will be enjoyed by her husband and his family at the expense of her own family. And also some of these girls believe that once they reach puberty, they are already old and cannot continue with school but ready for marriage. So this has made most parents to put less effort into girl child education.

I would like to go to the community itself and the different schools in the community to sensitize about the importance of girl child education and put an end to this myth which so many have believed in for such a long time. I would like to see more parents send their children especially the girls to school and finish just like I and many other girls have done. I would like to do this by introducing a teaching from the early classes in schools and right guidance from the parents to their children to help keep the girls in school longer until they complete their education.

This is a problem I cannot tackle alone and so, I seek your support by sharing this so that more people can come on board and help me in this fight by collaborating, connecting and even financially.