Aug
Rights for Youth and Women
Child pregnancy numbers in the first semester of 2020
Defenders of women’s rights warned that in El Salvador there is a considerable increase in abuse and pregnancies of girls and adolescents amid confinement by the COVID-19 pandemic in a country that, they say, has a high level of impunity in terms of sexual violence.
Silvia Juárez, from the Organization of Salvadoran Women for Peace (ORMUSA), told the AP that in the first half of 2020 the Public Health system of El Salvador registered 258 pregnancies of girls aged 10 to 14 years and 6,581 in the group from 15 to 19 years old, but warned that there is an under-registration due to confinement due to the pandemic.
According to the records, of the total of 759 consultations to people treated for the first time in the health network, 94% are women and 6% men. In the case of women, 8 out of 10 patients are girls and adolescents under the age of 18 years.
Juárez pointed out that the official figures of the Ministry of Health show a decrease of 8% in cases of pregnancies of girls compared to the same period of 2019, however, she maintains that this decrease is only revealing that during the pandemic there was less access of the women to the registry or health systems.
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