Troubling toll

Ignorant bliss: Our boys and girls cannot be wholly blamed if the system does too little to get them to understand that letting their hormones run wild can get them into serious lifelong trouble. — 123rf

IN news that seemed to have gobsmacked a lot of people, the Women, Family and Community Development Minister Datuk Seri Nancy Shukri announced that in the last four years, a total of 16,951 unmarried teenagers below the age of 19 were recorded as pregnant at government healthcare facilities. If we also count the married ones, there have been 41,842 pregnant teenagers in the same period.

None of this has surprised people who work in the reproductive health field but let’s unpack the information a bit.