INTRODUCTION
World Health Organization1
defi nes Teenage Pregnancy as
“any pregnancy from a girl who is 10-19 years of age”, the
age being defi ned as her age at the time the baby is born.2
Often the terms “Teenage pregnancy” and “Adolescent
pregnancy” are used as synonyms.
According to UNICEF, worldwide every 5th child is born
to teenage mother.3
Worldwide 13 million births each
year occur to girls younger than 19 years. The incidence
of teenage pregnancies varies dramatically between the
different countries. Approximately 90% of the teenage
births occur in developing countries.4
Nevertheless, there
is also a signifi cant variation in teenage pregnancy and
birth rates between developed countries, although the
teenage pregnancy and birth rate of developed countries
are signifi cantly lower than that of developing countries.