Rise in teenage pregnancies
TEENAGE pregnancies have increased in Rushmoor according to newly-released data on the health of the borough.
There were 57 conceptions by girls aged 15 to 17 in Aldershot and Farnborough in 2012, compared to 43 the previous year. This means 3.21% of all girls in this age bracket became pregnant that year – higher than the average for England of 2.77%.
The statistics, from Public Health England, compare all the boroughs in England and Wales in a number of areas, from suicide rates to cancer diagnoses. Hart compared favourably with a teen pregnancy rate of 1.21%, down from 1.54% in 2011.
For Rushmoor, the increased teen conception rate brings the level back up following a drop from 2010 to 2011. The rate was also high in 2009 and 2008, when 58 and 69 conceptions were recorded respectively.
The county council’s Hampshire Teenage Pregnancy Partnership works towards supporting teenage girls who fall pregnant and therefore are statistically less likely to finish their education and more likely to bring up their child in poverty.
Reducing teenage pregnancies is a priority of Hampshire County Council’s Local Area Agreement and talks are given in schools to children from reception to secondary school age. They also include advice on drug and alcohol misuse.
A council spokesman said: “The talks help with relationships early on to make people well rounded so that they can go out into society and fulfil a role.”
The annual health profiles use green, amber and red indicators to show how well each local authority is performing in each category.
Rushmoor had a red indictor – showing it was among the worst – for the number of children gaining five or more GCSEs, including English and maths, with 42.5% achieving this in the borough in 2012-13. This is worse than the 45.7% rate recorded the previous year and only marginally better than the lowest rate across England of 38.1%.
Hart fared much better with a 74.1% rate – up from 69.1% and above the English average of 60.8%.
The same gap in performance was seen in violent crime, with Rushmoor recording 1,215 compared to Hart’s 444. This puts Rushmoor just above the national average rate in relation to population sizes.
Other notable statistics included both Rushmoor and Hart with amber warnings for excess weight in adults, although both were better than the national average. Almost 0.3% (284) of the Rushmoor population were admitted to hospital in 2012/13 for selfharming, compared to 0.15% (131) in Hart.
Hart recorded strong results for all disease and poor heath-related statistics other than the rate of malignant melanoma – serious skin cancer – which was worse than average for England and was marked with a red warning. The only other area to receive a red indicator in Hart was for the rate of those killed and seriously injured on the roads. There were 47 such incidents in 2011-12, compared to 34 in Rushmoor.
Rushmoor was below average for all of the eight health categories and had red indicators for self-harm admissions and cases of tuberculosis, of which there were nine in 2010-12.