In 2015, when I was wrapping up my PhD, I realised South Africa did not have good national, or any other, quantitative data on how late in their pregnancies adolescents present for antenatal care. While the timing of antenatal care access (relative to a 5-month definition) is collected at clinic level, we don’t have individual-level data on timing of access to antenatal care relative to age.
I wanted to explore the question in a sample of facilities in Cape Town. So I had to walk an ethics route of two years to get clearance to collect data from adolescent mothers about their care experiences. To check that they would not be traumatised by an interview shortly after birth, the ethics committee suggested that I conduct focus groups with adolescent mothers prior to finalising the data collection instrument and going into the field.
And guess what, they said we so wished someone had shown interest in our pregnancy journeys. Even shortly after birth. Because our pregnancies were a source of shame to our families and communities, and no one wanted to talk about it.
The data were collected at the end of 2018 and into 2019. Thank you Grace Leach. I took a new job. Covid happened. We started analysing the data in 2020 (thank you Laura Rossouw). Online presentations happened. Refinement. Open access journals were flooded with submissions during the Covid pandemic. It’s a thing. We submitted, were rejected, and had to make new plans.
And then finally, this week, the final peer-reviewed paper was published.
What did we find?
More than 50% of the girls in our Cape Town sample who sought care, because yes, they are girls, only had their first visit after the first trimester. If we add the girls who did not seek any antenatal care before birth, the percentage goes up to about two thirds.
We’ve got to support our children better. Adolescent pregnancies deserve far more attention.
Read more about the study here: https://lnkd.in/dxgwUd9V
Photo credit: Anja Smith
