According to a study by the United Nations Population Fund, Panama is the fourth country in Latin America and the Caribbean with the highest number of teenage pregnancies with a rate of 67.2%. In global terms, this region ranks second in teenage pregnancies, only behind Africa.

On the other hand, this report that presents data from 2019, revealed that in that year in Panama there were 12,267 births from girls and adolescents between 10 and 19 years old, which represented 17% of live births in the country. It is added that of those, 458 deliveries were by girls between 10 and 14 years old.

The Minister of Social Development, María Inés Castillo pointed out that these figures not only represent a public health problem, but are directly undermining the chronological development of adolescent girls, she mentioned that to reverse this situation they reviewed and approved last Monday, the strategy for the prevention of adolescent pregnancy, which, among other things, will apply the sexual education guidelines of the Ministry of Education.

The minister indicated that the objective of the strategy is the prevention and reduction of early pregnancies through education to improve the lives of girls and adolescents between 10 and 19 years of age. "The social stigma must be overcome, they cannot be condemned ... we as a society are to blame for the lack of sex education," said Minister Castillo.

Some of the criteria used to measure this system were the educational level, labor participation and individual income of women in society. In addition, the report showed that adolescent pregnancies increase the cost for the State in relation to medical care for pregnancy, childbirth and the puerperium, in 2019 more than 15 million dollars were allocated to cover this item, according to to the figures of the Ministry of Health.

This information is obtained from the study Socio-economic consequences of pregnancy in adolescence in Panama, the project was implemented in ten Latin American countries, Panama is number eleven.