August 2016
Teen Pregnancy
A Major Health Problem in Mexico
Ismael Tapia Castro
IFMSA - Mexico
nora.ifmsa.mexico@gmail.com
Since 2007, Mexico set up public policies that aimed on prioritizing access to maternal health services, one of the most important ones was on May 28 of 2009 when the General Convention of Interagency Collaboration for the Care of Obstetric Emergency was signed by the Mexican Social Security Institute, the Institute of Social Security on Service for the State Workers and the Health Department , which provides that all women who develop obstetric complications must be entered in any of the health units in these institutions, regardless of their membership status. Between 2012 and 2013, the number of maternal deaths has decreased from 960 to 861, this resulted in a reduction in maternal death rate from 42.3 to 38.2 per 100,000 live births, but among teenagers aged 15 to 19 years, the maternal mortality ratio increased from 32.0 to 37.3 deaths per 100,000 live births, higher than the figure recorded among women aged 20 to 24 years representing one of the target groups of population to intervene within pregnancy prevention. Within the pregnancy control according to the results of the National Survey of Demographic Dynamics (ENADID, 2009), between 2004 and 2009 more than 97% pregnant women had prenatal screening,
the average number of revisions was seven and 95% of these cases were performed by medical staff. However, it has not been able to consistently reduce the maternal mortality, reflecting that the primary health care priority is not the quality of care delivery or obstetric emergency. It is important to point that bleeding and Hypertensive disease (mainly eclampsia) are the leading causes of death but the abortion as a cause of maternal death in Mexico is about 6% according to statistics from INEGI data for 2009. This represents that only 74 of 1207 women died from this cause during that year. Nevertheless, according to estimates by the World Health Organization, that percentage is 13% maternal mortality overall and 24% in the Latin America. It is estimated that in Mexico, approximately 4,200,000 pregnancies happen per year, and that only 60% reaches the end of gestation and the other pregnancies end with spontaneous abortions or induced abortions. Nevertheless, the criminalization of abortion does not prevent its practice; it is estimated that 9.2% of the pregnancies in women aged 15 to 19 years occurred between 2004 and 2009 ended in abortion despite the legal restrictions on 31 of the 32 states and the annual rate of hospitalizations for abortion in teenagers aged 15 to 19 years has increased in the country from 6.1 per thousand in 2000 to 9.5 in 2010. In terms of comprehensive sexual education, this area is one of the biggest challenges for our intervention as medical students being a main point to include sexual and reproductive education as a curricular component of the basic education preparing teenagers to adopt a healthy sexuality.
www.ifmsa.org
/ifmsa
@ifmsa