JAMAICA and other countries in the Caribbean region should expect a spike in teenage pregnancies as a fallout from the containment measures which were put in place to curtail the spread of the novel coronavirus during much of the past two years.

The caution was made by Jean Gough, United Nations Children’s Fund’s (UNICEF) regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean.

“This is what I have been seeing around different countries. One [teenage] girl getting pregnant is wrong and it hurts me to see it because I know it’s your future. It’s so hard, especially when you are alone at a young age with a child,” Gough told the Jamaica Observer during a recent interview.

Though she was not able to provide statistics on teenage pregnancy in the region, Gough said her forecast is based on her visits to several countries in recent weeks where she witnessed a significant number of teen moms.

“It is difficult to get numbers of it but to my eyes, I get alarmed. I went to a country and I went to a health centre and of course, UNICEF has been providing rapid tests for pregnancy detection and blood tests and when I went in, there was this young girl — below 15 years old — and right there she did the test and she was pregnant and HIV-positive,” said Gough.

“For me, when I looked on her face, it made me cry. This is a little girl! What could you expect when you see her blank face, not knowing what’s happening around her? I walked through that room and there were five or six girls pregnant. So, I have become so conscious of it. Everywhere I go, I see so many girls pregnant,” added Gough who commended the Women’s Centre of Jamaica Foundation (WCJF) for its effort in furthering the education of teen moms.

“Here, I went to see a programme that is run by the Women’s Centre, where the teenage girls are allowed to go back to catch up on education and there are parenting programmes around it, and that is something I haven’t seen across the region. So, I wanted to recognise that is something because you cannot condemn these girls and not give them the opportunity to go back,” she said.

“I understand that after that they deliver the baby, they can go back to school. This is something positive that I am seeing here in Jamaica. Girls should not be pregnant in the first place but if that happens, I was happy to see that she has a second opportunity,” added Gough.

She told Observer editors and reporters that she hopes more countries will follow Jamaica’s example by providing more educational programmes for teen moms, especially due to the effects of containment measures.

“This is something that we require and I don’t think we do enough in this forum. The fact that girls should [not] become pregnant and how we sell that message, it is not an easy message to convey.

“The confinement made people end up in places where you don’t even know and there are violent behaviours; and they don’t know where to go and they have to stay there and some don’t even have food, so it was not an easy time. There are some countries in the region where confinement was very strict and I think that’s something that we have learnt that has not been good for kids,” she said.

Data provided by WCJF for the academic year 21/22 showed that there 585 teen moms enrolled.

Previous data showed that there were 264 teen moms for the 2020/21 school year, 413 for 2019/20, and 518 for 2018/19.