Mortality Rates Still Too High for World's Teens

By Catherine Morrisey on April 25, 2012@CaMo0

This map shows births among adolescent girls 15 to 19 years old as a percentage of total births between 2000 and 2010.

It’s known as the “youth bulge” – a decrease in child mortality rates leading to the largest generation of adolescents in history: 1.2 billion to be exact. Adolescent is defined by researchers as those aged 10 to 19, due to growing trends in the earlier onset of puberty and delayed transition into adult roles.

As many of those teens face poverty, natural disasters and wars in addition to overwhelming physical and emotional changes, researchers worry about the lack of available health resources.

The publication, released by UNICEF, offers an intriguing overview of teenagers’ health and the risks they face around the globe:

The U.S. has the worst adolescent mortality rate out of 27 high income countries. Its rates of violent deaths (gang-related, homicides, etc.) are 10 to 20 times higher than other developed countries.
Suicide is the leading cause of death among adolescents worldwide, with the highest rates in Belarus, Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation.
Early childbirth is the leading cause of death for adolescent girls in Africa. Complications related to pregnancy account for 50,000 deaths each year.
In Eastern and Southern Africa, unsafe sex is one of the greatest risk factors for 10 to 14 year olds.
One in five adolescents in high income countries are binge drinking at least weekly. The U.S. also has a high rate,despite having a legal drinking age of 21.
Approximately 2.2. million adolescents are living with HIV.
More than a third of teenage girls between the ages of 15 and 19 are anemic, or have a deficient number of red blood cells and/or hemoglobin in the blood. Most anemia is due to insufficient iron in a person’s diet. Anemia can increase the risk of hemorrhage or sepsis during childbirth.
Although obesity is a growing problem in many countries, nearly 50% of girls aged 15 to 19 in India are underweight and more than 25% are underweight in 10 other countries.
Latin America and the Caribbean have the highest prevalence rates of adolescent tobacco use.