Child marriages, teenage pregnancies still a menace

AT the age of 15 she could have been mastering algebra and arithmetic with agemates in class but Tariro Moyo (not her real name) is sitting at a waiting mothers shelter at Nyanga District Hospital in Manicaland Province, her stomach bulging out of an evidently threadbare maternity dress that was passed on to her by her sister.

A Form Two dropout from Tombo area in Nyanga, the heavily pregnant Tariro says she is now married to her 24-year-old husband who paid part of the bride price at a family gathering in January. The husband is a herdboy for some average family in Bende area in the same district.

“I am actually married now, I got pregnant in January this year and I had to stop going to school. My husband is a herdboy, he also does farming at a homestead he is manning,” she said.

Asked on why she chose to drop out of school at such a tender age and go down the path she took, Tariro said she was young.

“Hwanga huri hupwere (I was young),” she giggled with a regretting innocence beaming from her eyes.

Tariro said she chose to be married off after an unplanned pregnancy and her parents accepted the bride price as she graduated from the joys of being a teen to the responsibilities associated with motherhood.

“They (parents) had no option but to marry me off because that is what had happened I had fallen pregnant and I also wanted to be married,” she said.

When she fell pregnant she said she managed to go to school for a few weeks before she dropped out. She said school authorities tried to make a follow-up after she had missed school for a while but eventually stopped their chase after it was discovered that she was now married and pregnant.

The matron for Nyanga District Hospital, Mrs Dorothy Toma, said cases like that of Tariro were a bit high in the hospital’s catchment area. She said the waiting mother’s shelter at the institution was usually overwhelmed as a large number of women and girls come to access services.

“We can accommodate 17 women in the shelter and we have to use floor mattresses when this situation arises as we can get as much as 35 women at a time. The beds become filled many times and we are forced to discharge them two days after giving birth instead of three days so that we accommodate other mothers who will be delivering here too,” she said.

Asked why the standard was that women were discharged after three days, she said it was to ensure there were no complications.

“Three days is essential in that this is when we observe and monitor for any post delivery complications. Some women may bleed continuously so the most that can happen can be detected in the three days that we will be observing the mother and the child,” she said.

She went on: “We have to see if the new mother does not have post partum haemorrhage (PPH), if the baby is feeding well and is free from complications. With these young people we sometimes encounter those that cannot breastfeed well and they also have poor attachment of the baby to the mothers’ breast so we assist in these cases,” said the matron Mrs Toma.

The institution is fortunate to have an establishment of 30 midwives who assist these young women to give birth. Matron Toma says the institution delivers between 350 to 400 babies every four months.

She said many of the women who come to access maternity services especially for first time mothers like Tariro come late to register for antenatal care.

“These women come when they are in the second trimester to register with us, yet we encourage women to come and register within the first three months of getting pregnant. This is because people in such communities want to be certain that they are pregnant before they visit the hospital so they delay a lot. Sometimes it will be that they will be carrying out certain cultural beliefs,” she said.

She urged pregnant women to visit the health facility in the first trimester so that they can be screened for cervical cancer, HIV and other conditions as a delay could expose the woman and unborn baby to those dangers.

United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Gender-Based Violence co-ordinator Verena Bruno told media practitioners at a Sexual Reproductive and Health Rights workshop in Mutare last week that family planning services were essential and there was a deliberate focus on accessibility of services to young people.

“Zimbabwe has a fairly young population that if not controlled, birth can be rampant, 22 percent of young women between 15 and 19 years of age have had their first child especially in rural areas,” she said.

She noted that issues of access to methods of family planning were of great concern to the young women in rural areas.

However, it emerged that issues of access to family planning for young people can be hampered by public and societal perceptions who believe that teenagers must not be having sex and therefore cannot be seen seeking family planning services.

There is a notion that society tends to label young people who are seen seeking family planning services such that they shy away and this usually results in unwanted pregnancies.

Young and expecting mothers like Tariro may have been victims of societal scrutiny where young sexually active women discouraged from seeking family planning services by their communities.

Tariro, however, still has hope of getting an education and said she wants to return to school after she has given birth and wants to be a teacher.

“After I give birth I want to go back to school and I want to be a teacher,” she said. Tariro who has been at Nyanga District Hospital waiting mothers shelter said she had been there since August and expects to give birth any time soon.

She was, however, sad that she does not get visits from her husband as often as she wants but was quick to say it was because he was unable to get transport money regularly for him to visit.

Despite efforts by stakeholders, child marriages still remain a challenge in Zimbabwe, mostly in the rural communities where a combination of factors such as lack of information, poverty and limited resources force girls to get married at a tender age.

The Constitution outlaws child marriages but this is happening with some communities still seeing nothing wrong with it. Despite information being available, Manicaland Province has a prevalence rate of 30 percent of child marriages.

However, accurate data on the true extent of child marriage is difficult to obtain since many of such marriages are not reported while sometimes the ages of the girls are falsified to exonerate the perpetrators.