Adolescents’ Sexual and Reproductive Health: Rajasthan

• 16 Oct 2021

Why in News

Recently, findings of a study titled “Returns on Investment in Adolescents’ Sexual and Reproductive Health in Rajasthan” were released.

• Adolescents are a heterogeneous group aged between 10 and 19 years, who are in different stages of development, live in varying circumstances and have distinct needs.

Key Points

• About Study
  
  • It examines the economic and health benefits that could accrue from increased investment in adolescents’ sexual and reproductive health-specific interventions in Rajasthan.
    
    • The study has calculated the benefit-cost ratio to conclude that for every Rs. 100 spent on meeting the unmet needs of adolescents, there will be a return of approximately Rs. 300 in terms of healthcare costs saved.
  • It also explores the potential for scaling up the services such as Access to contraceptives; Comprehensive Abortion Care (CAC); Weekly Iron and Folic acid Supplementation (WIFS); and, Menstrual Hygiene Schemes (MHS) across the state.
• Adolescents in India
  
  • Population: With 253 million adolescents (which implies that every fifth person in India is an adolescent), India has an unprecedented opportunity to accelerate economic development and reduce poverty.
  • Challenges to Healthy Development: A variety of factors that include structural poverty, social discrimination, regressive social norms, inadequate education, and early marriage and childbearing, especially in the marginalized and under-served sections of the population .
• The Case of Rajasthan
  
  • Adolescent Population: The total adolescent population of Rajasthan is 15 million or 23% of the total population in the state. Of these, 53% are males and 47% are females.
  • Child Marriage and Adolescent Pregnancy: It continues to be of concern in Rajasthan as more than one-third of the girls (35.4%) get married before 18 years of age and 6.3% in the age group of 15-19 years are already mothers.
    
    • This is significantly higher than the national average of 27%.
  • Impact on Mother and Infant
    • Birth-related Complications: Adolescent mothers aged 10-19 years face higher risks of birth-related complications like eclampsia, puerperal endometritis (uterine infection) and other systemic infections than women of higher age groups.
    • Risk to Newborn: Babies born to adolescent mothers also face a higher risk of low birth weight, prematurity, birth injuries, stillbirth and infant mortality.
    • Restrict Career Choices: Health problems, lack of education and the responsibilities of parenthood combine to further restrict the adolescent’s future economic opportunities and career choices.
  • Suggestions
    
    • Development of new standards and guidelines to improve the quality of reproductive health services.
    • The State government should prudently invest in ensuring that the working age population is healthy and literate, and has access to resources.
      
      • While the adolescent-specific health interventions needed to be sensitive to their requirements, nutrition supplementation programmes should also be strengthened and scaled up.
    • Increase in the modern contraceptive prevalence rate for spacing methods from the existing 10.1% to 32% in the 2021-25 period.
    • Adoption of a multi-faceted and innovative approach to reach out to adolescents.

Initiatives Taken

• Rajasthan
  
  • Zero Teenage Pregnancy Campaign: The aim of the campaign is to create greater awareness around teenage pregnancy in Rajasthan and encourage stakeholders to make a strong commitment towards ending teenage pregnancy.
• National Initiatives
  
  • Adolescent Friendly Health Services Program: Rashtriya Kishor Swasthya Karyakram is there, where female adolescents are sensitised about their health.
  • Scheme for Adolescent Girls: To facilitate, educate and empower Adolescent Girls (AGs) so as to enable them to become self-reliant and aware citizens.
  • Poshan Abhiyan and PM-Poshan Scheme to address the issue of malnutrition.

Source: TH