The North West provincial Health & Social Development Portfolio Committee has called for urgent action in response to teen pregnancies, and after recent revelations that a 16-year-old gave birth to her second child this month, fathered by a 35-year-old.
Committee chairperson Karabo Magagane said the committee “is dismayed by the disturbing rise in teenage pregnancies” in the province, reports News24.
The crisis was highlighted during the Premier’s visit to Joe Morolong Regional Hospital in Vryburg on New Year’s Day, where “we learned with shock and sadness” about the 16-year-old mother, he said.
Her first child was born two years previously, the father of that baby being 15 at the time.
Premier Lazarus Mokgosi said social workers should open a statutory rape case against the father of the second child.
Magagane called for “intensified and co-ordinated efforts” to address issues such as teenage pregnancy and gender-based violence.
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