RETURNS ON INVESTMENT IN ADOLESCENTS

• Recently, findings of a study titled “Returns on Investment in Adolescents’ Sexual and Reproductive Health in Rajasthan” were released.
• Adolescents are a heterogeneous group aged between 10 and 19 years, who are in different stages of development, live in varying circumstances and have distinct needs.

Important points:

• It examines the economic and health benefits that could accrue from increased investment in adolescents’ sexual and reproductive health-specific interventions in Rajasthan.
• The study has calculated the benefit-cost ratio to conclude that for every Rs. 100 spent on meeting the unmet needs of adolescents, there will be a return of approximately Rs. 300 in terms of healthcare costs saved.
• It also explores the potential for scaling up the services such as Access to contraceptives; Comprehensive Abortion Care (CAC); Weekly Iron and Folic acid Supplementation (WIFS); and, Menstrual Hygiene Schemes (MHS) across the state.
• Population: With 253 million adolescents (which implies that every fifth person in India is an adolescent), India has an unprecedented opportunity to accelerate economic development and reduce poverty.
• Challenges to Healthy Development: A variety of factors that include structural poverty, social discrimination, regressive social norms, inadequate education, and early marriage and childbearing, especially in the marginalized and under-served sections of the population .
• The total adolescent population of Rajasthan is 15 million or 23% of the total population in the state. Of these, 53% are males and 47% are females.
• It continues to be of concern in Rajasthan as more than one-third of the girls (35.4%) get married before 18 years of age and 6.3% in the age group of 15-19 years are already mothers.
• This is significantly higher than the national average of 27%.

Impact

• Birth-related Complications: Adolescent mothers aged 10-19 years face higher risks of birth-related complications like eclampsia, puerperal endometritis (uterine infection) and other systemic infections than women of higher age groups.
• Risk to Newborn: Babies born to adolescent mothers also face a higher risk of low birth weight, prematurity, birth injuries, stillbirth and infant mortality.
• Restrict Career Choices: Health problems, lack of education and the responsibilities of parenthood combine to further restrict the adolescent’s future economic opportunities and career choices.

Suggestions

• Development of new standards and guidelines to improve the quality of reproductive health services.
• The State government should prudently invest in ensuring that the working age population is healthy and literate, and has access to resources.
• While the adolescent-specific health interventions needed to be sensitive to their requirements, nutrition supplementation programmes should also be strengthened and scaled up.
• Increase in the modern contraceptive prevalence rate for spacing methods from the existing 10.1% to 32% in the 2021-25 period.
• Adoption of a multi-faceted and innovative approach to reach out to adolescents.

SOURCE: THE HINDU,THE ECONOMIC TIMES,MINT