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Why Adolescent Health And Why Now?

➜ Adolescents must be taken more seriously in efforts to improve health worldwide.
➜ There are almost 1.2 b illion adolescents in the world, and almost 90 percent live in low and middle income countries.
➜ Adolescent boys are also greatly neglected in terms of their health -- especially mental health and education needs -- and are disproportionately forced into child labour. The risks of drug use and violence are also considerably higher among boys, and young people account for almost 40 percent of all new HIV infections. Girls have much greater risks of coerced sex and are frequent victims of sexual violence. Worldwide, up to half of all sexual assaults are committed against girls under 16. Adolescent girls are more likely to be malnourished than adolescent boys with high rates of anemia and micronutrient deficiencies.
➜ despite the best efforts of s ome agencies, is adolescent health neglected ? Firstly, some of the evidence linked to the importance of adolescent mental and physical health to human development is as yet not fully appreciated by policy makers. Secondly, the solutions to many of the issues affecting adolescents have not been systematically collated and are considered complex to implement. In the hands of practitioners and health care services, adolescent health remains void in much of the developing world, with few services able to provide comprehensive and user-friendly services to adolescents. Adolescent boys and girls currently fall between pediatricians and adult physicians, and even for those in schools, existing services do not provide comprehensive and confidential preventive and promotive care. Finally, notwithstanding the global statistics shared above, there are few indicators or measures by which to track adolescent health and wellbeing. Very few of the existing demographic and health surveys forming the basis for policy making globally have adolescent health and nutrition indicators -- and as a result there is an information gap at country level. There is some work underway in this regard, but it has not yet achieved much traction in low- and middle-income countries.