Chandigarh, November 4: Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (PMNCH) has launched the first tranche of a special collection of articles arguing that the global agenda for sustainable development cannot be achieved without increased focus on demographic groups left behind, and specifically adolescents.
Within the collection, the authors describe how global public health investment per capita for adolescents is lower than in any other demographic and yet this group comprises 23% of the population of low-income countries, and numbers nearly doubled from 1980 to 2020.
Established in 2005, PMNCH is the world’s largest alliance for women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health and well-being, with 1,250 partner organizations working together through 10 constituency groups.
The author group, which includes India’s health secretary, argue that investing in the wellbeing of adolescents, which encompasses, but goes beyond health, will deliver economic returns well beyond the level invested. In the lead-up to the Global Forum for Adolescents in 2023, a special collection was published in The BMJ arguing for greater priority to be placed on the needs and wellbeing of adolescents globally.
Meanwhile over 1.5 million adolescents aged 10-24 years died in 2020, nearly 5000 every day, mostly from preventable or treatable causes. Globally, one in seven 10 to 19 year olds experiences problems with mental health, accounting for 13% of the global burden of disease in this age group. Every year at least 12 million girls are married before the age of 18, inhibiting their access to education. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its pledge to “leave no one behind” will not be achieved if urgent attention is not paid to adolescents and their wellbeing.
The collection advocates for centering the voices of youth themselves in agenda-setting and design, implementation, and evaluation of services intended for them.
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