Cuban Experts Call for Prevention of Adolescent Pregnancy

Havana, March 30 (ACN) As part of the ongoing International Congress of Researchers about Children, Adolescents and Youths, experts with the National Sexual Education Center (CENESEX), the Center for Studies on Youth (CESJ) and the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) called for the need to prevent adolescent pregnancy.

Psychologist Natividad Guerrero, from the CENESEX AND CESJ, said that adolescent pregnancy depends on different factors like sexual intercourse in early ages, even under 15.

Guerrero said that integral education on sexuality here is inefficient, there is poor information on contraceptives, while the contraceptive market is unstable, while abortion is sometimes wrongly conceived as a contraceptive method; there is also poor awareness of risky sexual relations, among other factors.

Meanwhile, psychologist Reina Fleitas, from the CESJ, said that adolescent maternity must be addressed from the perspective of genre and development so to approach it from a diversity as a factors influencing this complex phenomenon, which is driven by factors like age, race, geographic location, living conditions.

Adolescent maternity becomes a dilemma particularly for women, and in 2020 live births from these mothers represented 15.5 percent, while adolescent fathers stood for 2.6 percent of all those live births.

Another important factor is that most frequent pregnancies take place between 17 and 19 years of age particularly in eastern Cuba.

The International Congress on Children, Adolescents and Youth winds up March 31st at Havana’s Conventions Center.