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High Teen Pregnancy Rates In South Africa


Teenage pregnancy rates remain high in South Africa, despite years of campaigns against unprotected sex in a country where more than 10 percent of the population live with the HIV virus that causes AIDS.
An official study in 2002 said one in every three teenage girls in South Africa had been pregnant by the age of 19, with little apparent improvement since. The education ministry estimates that some 94,000 teenagers fell pregnant in 2011.
Poverty and other factors, like rape, have not helped .
With nearly 65,000 attacks a year, South Africa has one of the highest incidences of reported rape in the world, and the unemployment rate continues to exceed 25 percent .
The Pretoria school, in the heart of the capital, opened in the 1950s as a school for sick children in city hospitals. The first expectant girls were enrolled in the 1980s, when pregnancy out of wedlock was taboo.
It has 108 students, aged 13 to 18, following a peak in 2011 with 134 girls. After giving birth, the teens return to finish the academic year as new mothers.
According to 2012 figures by the World Health Organization, there are 16 million adolescent pregnancies around the world and 95 percent of these occur in developing countries.
Pray for the healing of the nations
Yahoo News 8/23/13


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