THE DESCRIPTIVE EPIDEMIOLOGY OF TEENAGE PREGNANCY IN VAIOLA HOSPITAL, NUKUALOFA, TONGA FROM 2011-2015.

Teenage pregnancies have continued to be a public health problem in the Pacific and around the world. It brings health risk to both mother and child, social problems, financial problems and even psychological problems. The purpose of this paper is to provide a descriptive epidemiology of teenage pregnancies at Vaiola hospital from 2011-2015 and to identify characteristics of these teenage mothers.
The study design was a Retrospective descriptive study with the study population of 919 teenage mothers and 91 mothers were randomly picked to be the study participant. The data for this study were extracted from the admission folders, recorded in a prepared spreadsheet and was analyzed and presented in graphs for better understanding and interpretations.
The results showed teenage pregnancy trend has been fluctuated within the five-year period with the highest number of 200 cases in 2012 and most of the cases were from the central area. Majority of the cases get pregnant and had sex at the age of 18, have normal baby birth weight, no medical history, no STIs and normal hemoglobin level. Further cross tabulation showed majority are delivered SVD with less intra-partum adverse effects due to high frequency of antenatal visit, not smoking or consume alcohol during pregnancy.
Teenage pregnancy does increase the risk of adverse birth outcomes that is independent of important known confounders. Future studies are needed to further examine the mechanisms on how younger maternal age increases the risk of adverse birth outcomes.