The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has launched a new adolescent health programme- Rashtriya Kishor Swasthya Karyakram. The programme envisages strengthening of the health system for effective communication, capacity building and monitoring and evaluation. Further, RKSK underscores the need for several constituencies to converge effectively and harness their collective strength to respond to adolescent health and development needs. The different stakeholders, working on issues related to adolescent health and development, have a lot to gain by building on each others work both in terms of achieving programme objectives as well as in the improved indicators for adolescent health and development.
Rashtriya Kishor Swasthya Karyakram (RKSK)
The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has launched a new adolescent health programme- Rashtriya Kishor Swasthya Karyakram. The programme envisages strengthening of the health system for effective communication, capacity building and monitoring and evaluation. Further, RKSK underscores the need for several constituencies to converge effectively and harness their collective strength to respond to adolescent health and development needs. The different stakeholders, working on issues related to adolescent health and development, have a lot to gain by building on each others work both in terms of achieving programme objectives as well as in the improved indicators for adolescent health and development.
Every year, an estimated 21 million girls aged 15 to 19 years and 2 million girls aged under 15 years become pregnant in developing regions. Approximately 16 million girls aged 15 to 19 years and 2.5 million girls under age 16 years give birth in developing regions.
The global adolescent birth rate has declined from 65 births per 1000 women in 1990 to 47 births per 1000 women in 2015. Despite this overall progress, because the global population of adolescents continues to grow, projections indicate the number of adolescent pregnancies will increase globally by 2030, with the greatest proportional increases in West and Central Africa and Eastern and Southern Africa.
Adolescent pregnancy can also have negative social and economic effects on girls, their families and communities. Unmarried pregnant adolescents may face stigma or rejection by parents and peers and threats of violence. Similarly, girls who become pregnant before age 18 are more likely to experience violence within marriage or a partnership.With regards to education, school-leaving can be a choice when a girl perceives pregnancy to be a better option in her circumstances than continuing education, or can be a direct cause of pregnancy or early marriage. An estimated 5% to 33% of girls ages 15 to 24 years who drop out of school in some countries do so because of early pregnancy or marriage .
Based on their subsequent lower education attainment, may have fewer skills and opportunities for employment, often perpetuating cycles of poverty: child marriage reduces future earnings of girls by an estimated 9%. Nationally, this can also have an economic cost, with countries losing out on the annual income that young women would have earned over their lifetimes, if they had not had early pregnancies.