NAC, Unicef partner parents to curtail spike in child pregnancy

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By Kennedy Nyavaya At the end of March last year, government put in place a hard national lockdown in an effort to curb the spread of Covid-19 and at that time, many details on what implications the “new normal” would bring were very sketchy. Stringent restrictions were in place, among them a curfew, while schools […]

By Kennedy Nyavaya

At the end of March last year, government put in place a hard national lockdown in an effort to curb the spread of Covid-19 and at that time, many details on what implications the “new normal” would bring were very sketchy.

Stringent restrictions were in place, among them a curfew, while schools closed indefinitely sending the country’s millions of young learners home and far from the classroom in an attempt to safeguard their health in the face of a raging pandemic that has so far killed over close to two million across the globe and hundreds locally.

However, what started as a defence mechanism to protect minors against one scourge has exposed them, particularly girls, to an equally harmful litany of delinquencies.

Drug abuse, child sex and teenage pregnancies, among other related consequences, are on the rise.

During lockdowns across the continent, World Vision International (WVI) predicted that as many as one million girls across sub-Saharan Africa could be blocked from returning to school due to pregnancy as a result of unprecedented Covid-19 school closures.

Back home the numbers are still sketchy, but even with schools having briefly opened and closed towards the end of 2020, a significant number of girls have reportedly dropped out owing to child marriages and pregnancy, signifying the intensity of the problem.

“A lot of my peers got pregnant during lockdown because they fell into traps mostly from older men with money, some of them were my classmates,” says Hazel Tarungamiswa, a Form 2 student at Rupare High School in Bikita district.

“It is all because we were staying at home without school work to keep us busy.”

According to 2018 statistics from the Education ministry, 12,5% of the country’s roughly 57 500 school dropouts stopped attending classes due to pregnancy or marriage reasons.

With virtually less than half a year of school attendance over the past 12 months, the numbers have certainly multiplied.

Apart from equipping children with academic qualifications and other vocations, schools have since time immemorial served as a way to keep minors busy and far from mischief.

A Bikita headman, Tototai Tambara, said young people in the villages were immensely affected by idleness during lockdown in what saw a rise in teen pregnancy and early marriages.

“Covid-19 really affected children because they stayed at home for too many months without learning and they were not being taught how to take care of their bodies, because children get life lessons from school, but Covid-19 made it impossible,” he said.

Tambara revealed that his engagements with other village leaders in the district showed that traditional hierarchy was at pangs to stop the rife phenomenon that has crippled long-standing efforts to empower the girl child.

“It has really set us back because we thought our children would finish school but there was a spike in sexual cases, and a lot of students got married before it was the right time so those, including rape cases, are some of the issues we have been dealing with as local leaders,” said Tambara.

Last year, the country made it illegal for schools to expel pupils who get pregnant, in a legal amendment that came as school closures due to coronavirus raised fears of a rise in sexual abuse and unwanted pregnancies.

But, poverty and archaic beliefs that also prioritise the education of boys over that of girls have seen the latter failing to proceed when they conceive by mistake or coercion.

This has made abstinence and safe sex education the most effective solution to keep children in school.

In Chivaka, a village in the Bikita district, the Nation Aids Council (NAC) and Unicef have partnered parents in an effort to teach the children, especially girls, about how to abstain as well as steer clear of sexual activities and other vices.

The programme, running under the banner Catch Them Young, came as an offshoot of an outreach programme organised by the two institutions- that saw 20 members within the district being taught about HIV and Aids, nutrition and disaster risk management among other teachings, last August.

“After their training, members of the network from this part (Chivaka) of the district decided that it was prudent to also teach and educate their children because they felt what they had received from the training was very important so they wanted to take it to their children,” said Bikita district Aids cordinator, Carlton Gatsi.

Bikita, says Gatsi, has had to deal with impacts of Covid-19 against the backdrop of hunger and Cyclone Idai that destroyed infrastructure and affected the wellbeing of locals in 2019.

“As a result of these disasters, the area has witnessed a rise in reckless sexual activities resulting in new HIV infections, early pregnancies and intergenerational sex,” he said, adding that the numbers were on an upward trend because of a “low risk perception”.

“At times they feel they are not prone to the virus and that also contributes. The other thing is we still have issues of intergenerational sex and we can still see them, for example, after the cyclone quite a number of our primary and high school girls got pregnant and most of them we heard they had been impregnated by people not within their age group.”

These are some of the issues being addressed by the Catch Them Young initiative in addition to reinforcing that girls must take their schoolwork seriously, according to Tarungamiswa.

“The programme has taught us to abstain and also think about keeping ourselves whole until marriage because it would be very hard to get into matrimony when one has lost their innocence,” the 17-year old said.

“We are also learning about taking our school work seriously as this will empower us to be self-sustaining than wait to be given money by those who want to take advantage of us.”

Nonetheless more still needs to be done to protect the girl child in the area.

Some learners walk long distances of up to 18km to and from school exposing them to sexual predatorswho drive across the same Masvingo highway they use.

“There is no other road to use as a short cut so students end up hitchhiking lifts to get to school on time and avoid punishment. This is how some of us have ended up in relationships with older rich men,” said Tarungamiswa.

As a result, numbers of pregnant children or those affected by sexually transmitted ailments have risen sharply in the recent past, says Gatsi.

“The data we put down shows that areas close to the highway are the most affected and the numbers of form twos and threes that got pregnant of late are disheartening, ” he said.

Meanwhile, reacting to a sharp increase in Covid-19 cases and deaths, the government last week tightened lockdown restrictions and once more closed schools indefinitely.

Though ostensibly necessary, a WVI research titled Covid-19 Aftershocks: Access Denied, last year reported that such attempts to avert the global health crisis could result in a significant number of girls engaging in risky sexual behaviour if not closely monitored.

“School closures during crises can result in girls spending more time with men and boys than they would were they to be in school, leading to greater likelihood of engagement in risky sexual behaviour and increased risk of sexual violence and exploitation,” reads the report partly.

“Teenage pregnancy is further linked to lack of sexual and reproductive health education and services, child marriage, health and well-being risks, and increased poverty and insecurity.”

This means that programmes like Catch Them Young will have to be continued and replicated as they play a critical role in keeping young girls safe from unwanted pregnancies and other consequences of child sexual exploitation and abuse.