July 20, 2017

Sierra Leone Teenage Pregnancy Surges After Ebola

located:	Sierra Leone
editor:	Shira Jeczmien

It’s been a year since the West African country of Sierra Leone declared itself free of the second outbreak of Ebola, affecting around 14,000 individuals, with a death toll of over 3,000. The country is now facing a ricochet effect – a spike in teenage pregnancies.

During the two years of the epidemic, the country’s medical resources, as well as international aid funding, were directly focused on the termination of the lethal virus. In conjunction, social services collapsed and schools closed for an entire year. What Sierra Leone experienced over this period is not only anxiety and death from the highly contagious virus, but also a halt to what essentially holds the country together in terms of education, sexual health and family planning services.

Sierra Leone has one of the world’s highest number of teenage pregnancies and maternal mortality rates; a third of girls between the age of 15-19 will become teenage mothers and less than half have access to medical care during birth. To allow a hint of perspective, that’s 18,000 teenage pregnancies in one year alone. Most of girls drop out of school, experience shaming in their communities, and receive virtually no support from the government.

The United Nations Population Fund have been the primary providers of the country’s contraception (95%), while funding the majority of its family planning services long before the 2014 outbreak of Ebola. With poor sexual health education – focusing on women, who, more often than not, have very little power over contraceptive choice or consent – the UNFPA’s aid is also the country’s only means to tackle growing numbers of teen pregnancies.

As the country now recovers from both the Ebola virus and a fragile economy as a result of price drops in global commodities, global aid is crucial. However, and here Trump’s repercussions are felt again; last month the US president made a disastrous (yet, sadly, not at all surprising) decision to cut all US backing of international family planning programmes as well as cutting support of UNFPA’s work in countries including Sierra Leone. It seems that in places where the myth around contraceptives is still rife, the population’s trust in aid is essential; thus, reconstructing clinics and building networks between international support is where UNFPA is needed in order to get teenage girls back in school, pregnancy numbers down, and the basic human right of family planning services running once again.