In line with the UN Population Fund’s theme for this year’s World Population Day, the Bureau of Health Promotion (BHP) has published data on Taiwanese teenage girls’ sexual experiences and pregnancy rates, adding that adolescent pregnancy may jeopardize the rights, health, education and potential of teenage girls.
According to the UN Population Fund, “about 16 million girls aged between 15 and 19 years old give birth each year, and complications from pregnancy and child birth are the leading cause of death among girls in this age group.”
Adolescent pregnancy is an issue “deeply rooted in poverty, gender inequality, violence, child and forced marriage, power imbalances between adolescent girls and their male partners, lack of education and the failure of systems and institutions to protect their rights,” it said.
Earlier last week, the bureau published the results of the Taiwan Youth Health Survey, which found that the percentage of teenagers aged between 15 and 19 who have sexual experience has increased from 8 percent in 1995 to 13.7 percent in 2011.
The percentage of teenagers who took the necessary precautions during their most recent sexual intercourse has risen from 69.5 percent in 2009 to 72.8 percent in 2011, while the percentage of respondents who had had experiences related to pregnancy has decreased from 1.8 percent in 2009 to 0.7 percent in 2011.
The percentage of respondents that had had an abortion decreased to 0.5 percent in 2011, from 1.5 percent in 2009, according to the agency.
The bureau’s figures show that despite an uptick in the percentage of teenagers with sexual experience, the rate of those who had experiences related to pregnancy or abortion have decreased as the awareness of protected sex has been successfully raised, the bureau said.
Although the adolescent fertility rate, or the number of births per 1,000 women aged between 15 and 19, has decreased from 10.89 in 2003 to 4.02 last year in Taiwan — which is lower than the 39 per 1,000 in the US, the 6 per 1,000 in China and Singapore, and the 5 per 1,000 in Japan — bureau Director-General Chiou Shu-ti (邱淑媞) said efforts to prevent adolescent pregnancy should be continued as it may damage the health of teenage mothers and their babies, and increase the perpetration of poverty among vulnerable groups.
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
RSS