Adolescent Clinics

All 1750 branches* are requested to open weekly adolescent clinic and focus on mental, reproductive & life style health. Adolescence covers 22% of the population and is the period of rapid physical growth, sexual and psychological changes..

Reproductive Health

  • Many adolescent boys and girls are sexually active but lack information and skill for self-protection (low level of information on Family Planning, low contraception use)
  • They have simple but wide pervading crucial reproductive health needs- menstrual hygiene, contraception (including emergency contraception) safety from STI and HIV
  • Adolescent sexuality: leads to adolescent pregnancy, unsafe abortion, RTI, STI/HIV and social problems
  • Adolescent pregnancy, the risk of ADVERSE outcome (IMR, MMR LBW babies) again is higher
  • Median age at marriage for girls in rural areas is alarmingly low at 14.5 years.
  • Adolescent pregnancy is Common (50% of women in India had a child before reaching the age of 20. (Indian Paediatrics, January 2004).
  • One out of ten children in India is sexually abused at any given point of time.
  • 25% of the patients attending government STI clinics are younger than 18 years old (Ramasubban- 1995).
  • Maternal Mortality elated to pregnancy and childbirth are an important cause of mortality for girls aged 15-19 worldwide, accounting for 70,000 deaths each year. Girls who give birth before the age of 15 are five times more likely to die in childbirth than women in their twenties.

Mental Health

  • Psychological problems also arise like emotional disturbances, depression, low self esteem and anxiety over inadequate or excessive secondary sexual

development, Acne etc.

  • Life Style Health

·         Habits and behaviour picked up during adolescence (risk taking behaviour, substance abuse, eating habits, conflict resolution) have lifelong impact.

·         70% of the mortality in adulthood is linked to these habits picked up during adolescence

·          Adolescence is the last chance to correct the growth lag and malnutrition.

·         Prevailing malnutrition, anaemia, stunting and lack of immunization have adverse impact on MMR, IMR, morbidity and have intergenerational effects.

·         Stunted adolescent getting married giving rise to a low birth baby, that too female, again unable to develop or develop in to a stunted female and the cycle keeps on repeating

·         A large number of adolescents are still unimmunized.