Mortality Rate and Pregnancy in Sierra Leone

Running head: MORTALITY RATE AND PREGNANCY IN SIERRA LEONE
Mortality rate and pregnancy in Sierra Leone
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1MORTALITY RATE AND PREGNANCY IN SIERRA LEONE
The issue of early pregnancy is one of the common issues of the developing countries of
the 21st century. However, in the case of countries like Sierra Leone, it has been observed that
the country faces one of the serious challenges of teenage pregnancy (Denney et al., 2018). This
has been highlighted that 20% of women between the ages of 15-19 are subjected to early
pregnancy (Bellizzi et al., 2018). Over 40% of the totals among women happen due to the
reasons of the teen pregnancy (UNICEF, 2019). This is important to note that some of the
reasons for this early pregnancy and related death are the custom of early marriages below the
age of 18 is a common phenomenon. This further deteriorates the situation of early pregnancy
and high rate of mortality. This teenage pregnancy leads to the problem of lack of knowledge
and concern for the sexual health of women themselves and severe diseases like HIV (Denney et
al., 2018). There is a number of international and national government and institutions taking
steps for the development of understanding regarding the issues they are facing. This is the
particular issue has been termed as the “children of children” since the age of carrying a child is
low, and it is having a negative impact for both the mother and child (Bellizzi et al., 2018).
Childbirth at this age is one of the reasons for risk of mortality and morbidity. Moreover, there is
a higher number of fistula among teenage mothers. Such a situation is not only detrimental to the
health of the mother; it is equally detrimental to the child as well. In most of the situations,
children of these mothers are malnourished or die at an early age due to the factors of lack of
treatment and nourishment (Labat et al., 2018). This can also be highlighted that the problem of
early childbirth is related to the lack of educating among the young girls. Hence this paper will
be preparing one of the advocacy approaches for eradicating higher mortality rate of the teenage
of Sierra Leone.