For the duration of the 2019-2020 school year, more than 500 cases of pregnancies were recorded in secondary schools in Benin’s north-eastern department of Borgou according to the Beninese news agency (ABP) reported from Cotonou.
“Altogether, 547 out of 36,487 school girls regularly registered were pregnant during the 2019-2020 school year as against 431 cases in 2018-2019” ABP had reported, quoting Thomas Adam, a Representative of the child protection department of Secondary education and professional and technical training ministry.
Adam attributed the increase in pregnancies cases to the long cessation of classes observed during the coronavirus pandemic.
Although no strategy linked to the phenomenon was yet made public, several analysts of the Beninese society fear that the crisis linked to the COVID-19 hindered the measures taken to eradicate early pregnancies in schools. (PANA)
