ADOLESCENT LIFE in Jamaica and the Caribbean is characterised by high levels of unemployment, attempted suicide, violence, poverty, substance abuse, sexually transmitted infections and school dropouts.
This was reported on Wednesday by Dr. Sheila Campbell-Forrester, the Ministry of Health's Regional Director of the Western Regional Health Authority, when she testified before Parliament's Human Resources and Social Develop-ment Committee. Wednesday's meeting heard a report on the recent launch of the Caribbean Movement of Parliamentarians on Population and Development (CMPPD) in Nassau, Bahamas, where adolescent health and development issues were discussed.
"Regionally, we are concerned about issues like HIV/AIDS in that age group. We are concerned about crime and violence, the whole matter of reproductive health, including early pregnancy and sexually-transmitted infections," Dr. Campbell-Forrester told the committee. Also, she expressed concern about the levels of literacy and the level of school dropouts as well as poverty and unemployment.
In the case of Jamaica, about 21 per cent of the population is classified as adolescents, in the age group 10 to 19 years. However, Dr. Campbell-Forrester said that the age group could be as high as age 25 as there was debate over where adolescence really ends.
More than half of those so classified in Jamaica are unemployed. Another one in five is said to be poor, one in five is not enrolled in school, and half drop out between the ages of 15 and 16 years.
Dr. Campbell-Forrester pointed to a 1996 School Health Survey which shows that the average age of first sexual encounter for boys is 11 and for girls, 14. Also, it shows that one in every three births in Jamaica is to adolescent mothers, and the spread of HIV/AIDS among this group has been doubling every two years.
"When we look again at the survey and look at crime and violence, and just remember this (the survey) is 1996, the situation could have got worse or better and I think it's more worse," she said.
Of concern is that one out of every 10 crimes was committed by an adolescent. Data from hospitals are also alarming as of 2,600 injury cases dealt with at Cornwall Regional Hospital, Montego Bay, about 50 per cent were violence-related with the 15 to 34 age group being the dominant one.
One in 10 adolescents had attempted suicide, and "extreme anger, rage and aggressive behaviour is often missed, and only detected when a crime is committed," said Dr. Campbell-Forrester. She disclosed that there was also a problem of substance abuse with alcohol, inhalants and marijuana (ganja) being the main problem.
A worrying trend was that risk behaviours that occur in adolescents have the same root cause. Those found with a reading problem were the same ones who engage in early sex, will fight with a weapon, and who attempt suicide.
"If we look at it in a developmental context we will see that our productivity will be affected if our young men, especially, are dying," she emphasised.
The CMPPD bases its work largely in adolescent health and development. Its goal is to "contribute to the overall health and development of the adolescent population as an integral component of the economic, social, cultural, moral and political development of the Caribbean region".
The Nassau Declaration which signalled the coming into being of the CMPPD on November 24 in the Bahamas, was based on acknowledgements including the call to action in the Cairo Declaration on Population and Development adopted by governments in 1994. It, inter alia, calls on parliamentarians everywhere to "establish and/or strengthen, at the sub-national, national, regional and global levels, parliamentary committees on population and development and to promote and expand co-operation among parliamentarians around the globe in the field of population and sustainable development".
The Nassau Declaration acknowledges also that women, female adolescents and girls in the region were still at unacceptable levels, victims of endemic sexual violence and abuse, sexual exploitation in all its forms, general violence and domestic violence.
