Teen pregnancies remain prevalent in Francistown
Lesedi Mkhutshwa | Wednesday July 2, 2025 06:00
Pitso, who was presenting the Urban Development Committee (UDC) report during the just-concluded full council meeting, said teenage pregnancies have risen from 60 during the previous quarter to 70 between January and March 2025.
She stated that teenage pregnancy cases are on the rise due to barriers on sexual health between parents and children.
Pitso also said there has been an increase in defilement cases, which is linked to adolescent pregnancy cases.
She indicated that they registered 21, 44, and 50 cases of defilement for the first, second and third quarters respectively.
'Bo Rre, tlogelang makgela a butswe (Men, leave the young ones),' she remarked.
Pitso added that their goal is to lower the rate of adolescent pregnancies from 9.2 percent to 7.5 percent by March 2025.
It is said that the country’s second city recorded 62 cases of teenage pregnancies between April and June 2024.
The cases reduced to 57 between July and September 2024 and then increased to 60 between October and December 2024.
Speaking about the Antiretroviral (ARV) programme, she stated that currently there are 21,450 clients on treatment.
Pitso said they registered four deaths related to HIV/AIDS, down from five compared to the previous quarter.
She also revealed that one of the challenges that there is high number of clients lost to follow-up due to giving wrong numbers and physical addresses.
Pitso elaborated that they have zero Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission (PMTCT) cases.
She stated that they recorded 3509 cases of Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI). Pitso was worried about low partner testing rates in the second city.
She also said that 64,760 condoms were distributed from January to March 2025 which is a decline from the previous quarter of which 84,157 condoms were distributed.
She made an emphasis on the need for continued promotion of safe sex practices.
On another note, she said that they recorded 10 cases of Malaria and 145 diarrhoea cases of which 90 had no dehydration, and 51 with dehydration. She mentioned that they recorded three suspected cases of measles.
According to Pitso they recorded 6,600 cases of hypertension, 580 cases of diabetes, 10 cases of cardiac failure, and 658 cases of asthma.