KUCHING: Percentage statistics of teenage pregnancies in Sarawak showed a decrease of 14.7 per cent in 2016 from 2015.
This gives a preliminary view that the setting up of the One Stop Teenage Pregnancy Committee (OSTPC) since 2014 has had a face-to-face impact.
This was revealed by Minister of Welfare, Community Well Being, Women, Family and Childhood Development Datuk Hajah Fatimah Abdullah after launching the “Pregnant Teen Cases Management Guidelines” at Merdeka Palace Hotel here, yesterday.
However, she said, the percentage of pregnant and non-married teenagers from January to June this year rose by 54.1 per cent compared to the previous year’s 48.5 percent.
“We will conduct an investigative study on this case with the cooperation of Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) and will be implemented in Kapit in September.”
“We chose Kapit because it has the highest proportion of teenage pregnancies in the state. However, through its OSTPC programmes, Kapit has shown a decline in the number of pregnant teenagers.
“We will hand over the responsibility to the State Health Department to be front liners for this case. They have already agreed to come out with profiling starting from August this year,” she explained, adding that her ministry wanted to see more decreases in the number of teenage pregnancies this year and following years.
She pointed out that although Sarawak has achieved KPIs in the decreased number of teenage pregnancies cases, but it is still unsatisfactory because Sarawak still records as the highest percentage of teenage pregnancies cases in Malaysia.
Commenting further, Fatimah said the launch of the Pregnant Teen Cases Management Guidelines was to ensure that teenage pregnancies cases in the state were more effectively managed.
She added that in order to empower teenagers, her ministry will continue to implement various awareness-raising programmes, advocacy and prevention with public agencies, private and non-government organisations (NGOs) to reduce the number of teenage pregnancies cases in Sarawak.
