Study: Muslim, Catholic girls top in early pregnancies

Non-religious girls lead in early pregnancies while Protestants top in delaying first births, well ahead of Catholics and Muslims.

A detailed analysis of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania shows that early pregnancies are disproportionately affecting the non-religious, poorest, illiterate, rural girls and particular regions.

Apart from poverty and illiteracy, the University of Southampton, UK, has now added religion as a cause for determining which girls are most likely to fall pregnant early in life.

"In Kenya, those who state they are Muslim or Catholic have higher percentages of adolescent first births than Protestants and those who state they are of no religion have markedly higher percentage of adolescent births," says the study published in the journal Reproductive Health.

The researchers analysed the most recent Demographic and Health Surveys from the three countries.

The study found that Western Uganda has the highest concentration of young mothers in the region. The region with highest child mothers in Kenya is Nyanza, while in Tanzania it is Tabora.

The researchers say the current programmes to reduce early pregnancies have failed to reach the neediest, but may have helped girls from wealthy families who can access the mass media and birth control information and products.

The study recommends that more sex education, condoms and other birth control products be targeted at younger adolescents and especially among poor communities.

But this prescription differs significantly with an earlier one by Kyalo wa Ngula of African Nazarene University and his colleagues from the University of Central Florida, US, who recommended a bigger dose of Pentecostal gospel as a cure for runaway early sex.

Ngula's team studied sexual behaviour among youth in Nairobi and, just like the UK group, concluded that Pentecostal/Evangelical (PE) youth were much more restrained from sexual activities.

In the study published in the African Journal of AIDS Research, Ngula and his team collected data from 355 youth attending 45 different churches in Nairobi.

The team categorised churches in Nairobi between mainline comprising the Catholics, Anglicans, Methodists and Presbyterians, which the scholars said have low lifestyle demands on their members.

On the other hand, was the PEs which included Full Gospel, Assemblies of God, the Baptist as well as inter-denominational churches. These groups, the researchers say, make high demands on members' lifestyles including the persuasion to be "born again".

Ngula argues that it has been shown in other studies in Africa that PE church members are less likely than followers of mainstream religions to be involved in premarital sex or "Mipango ya Kando".

"Catholics, Muslims, and members of indigenous religions were more likely to have had an extramarital affair than were Protestants, especially Pentecostals," wrote the Ngula team which was led by Prof Ann Neville Miller of the University of Central Florida.

The team concluded that PE church-going youths in Nairobi were less likely, than those attending mainline churches, to have sex.

In comparison, with the mainline church youths, the group of Pentecostal youths reported more frequent church service attendance, a higher number of religious activities and more frequent talk about spiritual issues with church confidants. They were also more likely to be born-again Christians, say the authors.

"Our findings suggest that specific teaching about sexual abstinence may be less important than talking about a range of life issues within a community of like-minded believers," say the African Nazarene University study. It recommends a higher dose of the same to reduce adolescent sex in Kenya.

The three-country study advocates more condoms, more sex education and more freedom to access abortion services.

The study published in a reputable scientific journal is likely to give credibility to the push in the Senate to have more sex education and condoms for schoolchildren.

It blames restrictive abortion laws, high rates of premarital sex and restrictions in accessing contraception for the high rates of early pregnancies in the three countries. They call for specific intervention especially for children with single parents and those who are orphaned.