‘Female adolescent struggles are often overlooked’ – health and wellbeing experts

“When it comes to any global issue, whether it’s nutrition, national policies, mental health or climate change, somehow we always miss the adolescent age group. As an adolescent ambassador working in public health now, I can see how adolescents’ health issues are often overlooked.”

These were the opening remarks of Surabhi Dogra, a commissioner on adolescent health at Lancet, one of the leading pathology laboratories in Africa.

Dogra was speaking during a webinar discussion on the challenges adolescent women face and the issues that shape adolescent girls and young women’s health and wellbeing. 

Joining the discussion were ​​Dr Shakira Choonara, technical specialist at the World Health Organization and Lancet commissioner on adolescent health and wellbeing, and Daily Maverick reporter Suné Payne.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCD__GA6jVQ&t=11s

For Choonara, the starting point for a discussion of this nature is by way of a definition of adolescents: 

“Essentially, when we talk about an adolescent, we are talking about a teenager … someone in the early phase of life between childhood and adulthood, from ages 10 to 19. Of course, what we can also see is that you cannot only focus on the 10 to 19 cohort – we do extend to 24 years old. Globally, we look at youth up to the age of 24, but on the African continent we do extend this to 35 years,” said Dogra.

“As it stands, we have the largest adolescent group in history … facing greater health challenges compared with the adolescent generation of 25 years ago, and, obviously, we can see that investments, policies and programmes are not keeping up with the growth in this age group.”

Situation between 1990 and 2016