According to the UNICEF Global Report card on Adolescents 2012 ,47% of adolescent girls aged 15 to 19 in India are underweight with a body mass index of less than the prescribed level of 18.5.
India’s demographic dividend might get negated with about half of adolescent girls reported unhealthy.
According to the UNICEF Global Report card on Adolescents 2012 47% of adolescent girls aged 15–19 in India were underweight with a body mass index of less than the prescribed level of 18.5.
The south Asia region as a whole fared badly on the body mass index level with Bangladesh and Nepal having 35% and 26%underweight adolescent girls respectively.
The global report listed India as a prime destination for adolescent girls to bear children. It found out that 22% of women aged 20-24 years gave birth before the age of 18 in India.
The UNICEF report said India, Bangladesh, and Niger accounted for one in every three of the world’s adolescent births. 40% of women in Bangladesh conceived before the age of 18 years followed by Nepal at 23% and Pakistan at 10% respectively.
Highlighting the causes, Dr Meenakshi Banerjee, consultant gynecology at Max Hospital, Saket said, "Poverty and lack of proper education are the main reasons behind such situation. Some communities in India still go for early marriages which results in early pregnancy." This, she added, resulted in further worsening of the health of the adolescents.
Globally, each year around 16 million girls aged 15–19 gave birth, accounting for around 11% of all births. Countries of Latin America and the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa had the highest proportion of adolescent births. In both these regions, around one in five babies was born to an adolescent mother.
On sexual behavior among adolescents, UNICEF found that girls were more likely than boys to have sex before age 15. Eight percent of adolescent girls in South Asia had sex before the age of 15. In India, 8% of adolescent girls had sex before the age 15 and 3% of adolescent males had sex before age 15. The south Asia average too was around the same lines. The highest overall rate for sex under age 15 is 17% among Latin American and the Caribbean.
Brazil observed 33% adolescent girls to have experienced sex under the age of 15 and Haiti observed 42% adolescent boys to have experienced sex under the age of 15.
On violence against women as wives, the UNICEF report found out that 57% of adolescent male in India supported wife beating while 53% of female adolescent too supported wife beating.
Expressing deep concern over the issue, Kulsoom Rashid, project associate at Jagori, a woman centric NGO said, "The patriarchal system also does not allow girls to revolt and resist. They know that they are born to get subjugated. They are the sufferers of the lot and so the boys take undue advantage of the situation."
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