Women’s Council to focus on fighting teen pregnancies in 2018

The National Women’s Council’s main focus for 2018 will be fighting unwanted pregnancies among girls in the country. Aurore Umuhoza, coordinator of the National Women Council. The remarks were made yesterday during the council’s general assembly meeting in Kigali. The meeting was convened to reflect on what was achieved in 2016/2017 as well as looking at the priorities for the remaining part of 2017 and 2018. Aurore Umuhoza, the coordinator of the National Women Council in Kigali said after the meeting that many different things that were planned by the council for 2016/2017 were achieved, and where that more efforts were needed was fighting early unwanted pregnancies among the girls. “We want to emphasize to the women about the need to fight the problem of unwanted pregnancies among children. We shall sensitize them, but we shall also draw close to the children to talk to them,” she said. “There are a big number of children who drop out of school because of this problem, and many times you find that it results from parents who are not caring about their responsibilities to their children,” she added as she pledged to encourage parents to go for family meetings commonly known as Umugoroba wababyeyi in order to discuss solutions for their children’s safety. Some of the achievements last year included the good participation of women in the recent elections, financial support given to twelve women cooperatives in the city of Kigali, among others. The guest of honour, Fatou Harerimana, vice president of the Senate, urged women in Kigali to be exemplary to the rest of the women in the country to make sure that no one is left behind as far as development is concerned. Lack of proper data teenage pregnancy remains a challenge despite efforts to curb the vice by both government and civil society organisations. The 2014/15 Demographic and Health survey showed that teenage pregnancy rates in Rwanda increased from 6.1 per cent in 2010 to 7.3 per cent in 2015. editorial@newtimes.co.rw

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Women’s Council to focus on fighting teen pregnancies in 2018