Pregnancy is a physiological process, presenting with history of missed period, fatigue, breast enlargement and tenderness, abdominal distension, nausea and vomiting together with light-headedness. Abdominal ultrasound, urinary or serum levels of HCG are confirmatory tests for pregnancy. When these happen at age of 19 years or below they are called adolescent or teenage pregnancies.

Factors which contribute to adolescent pregnancies include poverty, areas with low practice of human rights.

METHODOLOGY

A study by Robert Berkow et.al. in 1999 showed that adolescent pregnancy is a multifaceted proble. Without wasting your time I can come by concluding that:

A cross sectional descriptive analytical study which targeted all girls in secondary schools at Tanga municipality,

Results

Low socioeconomic status was found to be an important cause for adolescent pregnancies as 57.1% of respondents suggested. Other factors responsible were luxury and deprivation of education to girls (43.5% and 16.5% respectively). Source of reproductive health education was contrary to most previous studies as 82.6% reported to get it from parents and health centres, while schools and peer groups contributed only 29.1% and

7.2% respectively.

Conclusion

Parents and guardians are important source of reproductive health education to adolescents and useful for prevention of early pregnancies. Early marriages are not as much important as source of adolescent pregnancies.

Recommendations

I encourage parents/guardians, to educate their children on reproductive issues, and to increase access to education for girls, which is of paramount importance in preventing adolescent pregnancies.

it involves social, political, cultural, educational and

economical factors. Some of the risks that the newborn

babies are exposed to are premature delivery, cerebral

palsies and mental retardations due to birth injuries.

Adolescent pregnancies are associated with STDs,

abortions and HIV/AIDS.

The adolescents who become sexually active need

access to reliable contraceptive methods. Adolescent

who are at risk and those with pregnancy and

parenting need psychological support and proper

information and motivation not to conceive again

during adolescence. It is therefore important to tackle

this challenge from all aspects i.e. social, political,

cultural, educational and economical aspects.

This was a cross-sectional descriptive analytical study,

schools were listed to get three schools by random

selection from which a sample of 200 was obtained

by random choice of the classes.