Nairobi News

Nearly 1.2 million teenagers between ages 13 and 19 die each year around the world — more than 3,000 a day — largely from preventable causes, new research from the World Health Organization (WHO) has shown.

Two-thirds of these deaths among young people aged between 10 and 19 years in 2015 occurred in low and middle-income countries in Africa and Southeast Asia, with road traffic injuries, lower respiratory tract infections and suicide topping the list of the biggest causes of death.

In many cases, the international health agency notes, adolescents who suffer from mental health disorders, substance use, or poor nutrition cannot obtain critical prevention and care services — either because the services do not exist, or because they do not know about them.

RISKY SEXUAL BEHAVIOUR

In addition, factors such as poor diet, lack of exercise and risky sexual behaviour, which can impact health throughout a person’s life, also begin during adolescence and need to be taken into account, according to the report.

Dr Flavia Bustreo, WHO assistant director-general for family, women’s and children’s health, explained that for decades, despite making up a larger proportion of the global population, adolescents have been entirely absent from national health plans.

“Relatively small investments focused on adolescents now will not only result in healthy and empowered adults who thrive and contribute positively to their communities, but it will also result in healthier future generations, yielding enormous returns,” Dr Bustreo said in a press statement.

The report notes that the leading cause of death among 10 to 19-year-olds globally in 2015 was road injury, which killed more than 115,000 people.

SUICIDE

Adolescents are also at very high risk for self-harm and suicide, notes the report, titled Global Accelerated Action for the health of adolescents (AA-HA!): Guidance to Support Country Implementation.

These two factors — suicide and accidental death from self-harm — made up the third leading cause of death for teens in 2015, claiming about 67,000 lives worldwide.

Self-harm largely occurs in older teens and is the second leading cause of death in older teen girls.

The picture is very different when focus is shifted to regional causes of death among adolescents.

“While some conditions are common across regions, such as road injuries and suicide, there are others that are more prominent in certain regions,” said Dr David Ross, a WHO medical officer who co-authored the report.

Road injuries, for instance, were the leading cause of death, when combining sexes in high-income countries as well as the low and middle-income countries of Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific regions.

SELF-HARM

However, self-harm took the lead in Europe, war in the Eastern Mediterranean, violence and abuse in the Americas and lower respiratory infections in the African region.

When separated by age, sex and region, however, the leading causes of death differed significantly.

“The importance of adolescent health has been increasing. But a lot more needs to be done,” Dr Ross said.

Among boys aged 10 to 19 years, road injuries were the greatest cause of death, claiming an estimated 88,590 boys compared with 26,712 girls of the same age.

Most of these boys, the report noted, were pedestrians and cyclists.

The second leading cause of death for boys was interpersonal violence such as physical or sexual abuse, or emotional threats.

“In most deaths by road accident, the adolescent is a passive victim. In only a small proportion as the driver. That proportion is higher in high-income countries,” he added.

AIR POLLUTION

In girls, the causes of deaths also had a clear division based on age, with most of those 10 to 14 dying from lower respiratory infections such as pneumonia as a result of exposure to indoor air pollution.

Older girls, from 15 years, saw greater risk of deaths from pregnancy complications such as haemorrhage, sepsis, obstructed labour and childbirth as well as complications from unsafe abortions.

“Improving the way health systems serve adolescents is just one part of improving their health,” said Dr Anthony Costello, WHO’s head of maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health.

The report includes a range of interventions to improve adolescent health and details on how countries can deliver such programmes.

These include comprehensive sex education in schools, higher age limits for alcohol consumption, laws mandating seat belts and helmets, reducing access to and misuse of firearms, reducing indoor air pollution through cleaner cooking fuels, and increasing access to safe water, sanitation, and hygiene.

“Families are extremely important as they have the potential to positively influence adolescent behaviour and health,” Dr Costello said.