Soroti city leading in teenage pregnancy – survey

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Soroti city, located in Uganda’s east, is leading in teenage pregnancies, according to a landscape analysis on Sexual and Reproductive Health and HIV/AIDS in the Teso sub-region.

The revelation was made during the regional inter-faith dialogue organised by the Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) Alliance in Soroti city and religious leaders of eastern Uganda.

Dr Alfred Anyonga, the city health officer who presented the landscape analysis, said the average age of mothers in the city was 15, which was an improvement compared to two years ago when the age bracket was just 13 years.

“Every day, I attend emergencies, and my emergencies are very young girls between 15 to 16 years of age. It’s rare to operate on a lady above 18 years in our facility, Dr Anyonga noted.

In another shocking revelation, Dr Anyonga said 7% of adolescents in Soroti City were found HIV positive, an issue he says needs urgent attention.

He reported that commercial sex was thriving in Soroti city, with many young girls lured into the trade by the wrong people.

“We’ve reports that there were cases of someone claiming to be a church leader going deep in the villages to get girls, promising them that his church organisation was going to sponsor their education, but once they are brought to town, they are forced to do commercial sex,” stated Dr Anyonga.

He noted that such dubious people target rural parents who do not question their intentions and without the capacity to visit their children at school.

“The parents will say the person is God sent to save their family, yet their children end up in the wrong hands,” explained Dr Anyonga, adding that 122 places in the city had been mapped as hot spots where commercial sex and other dubious activities take place.

Margaret Nannyombi, the programs manager at SRHR Alliance, said religious leaders hold a critical role in shaping a generation of healthy, empowered, and well-informed young people.

She implored the religious leaders to align their faith-based values to create an enabling environment for adolescents to access the support and information they need to prosper.

The Regional Assistant Mufti for Teso-Karamoja Region, Sheikh Abubaker Obilan, acknowledged the importance of religious leaders prioritising their efforts in designing messages that target adolescents.

Sheikh Obilan also expressed the need for theological institutions where religious leaders train to have curricula that meet the current challenges faced by young people.

“We are in a generation where parents have abandoned their responsibilities to maids. The children come from maids to teachers in schools and us, the priests and sheikhs in places of worship, so we need to design messages that help our adolescents to survive,” Sheikh Obilan said.

Rev. Nathan Mugalu from Namirembe Diocese explained that the priests posted to work as chaplains of educational institutions have a big chance of preaching to adolescents about living healthy, responsible, and dignified lives.

The diocesan secretary Soroti Anglican church, Canon Sam Ediau, promised that the diocese was focusing their energy on addressing the rising cases of teenage pregnancies in Soroti city by holding seminars in all church-founded institutions of learning as well as youth conferences.