Health Challenges of the Decade by WHO- #9 Unsafe Adolescence

Adolescence is understood to mean the period between childhood and adulthood. Generally this signifies that they are no more children but on the way to become adults and the age group between 13-17 years can be called an adolescent age.

Just like any other age group, youth also holds enough health risks. 

As the general portrait indicated, a few areas of risk-taking pose the most serious threats to adolescents: sexual risk-taking, substance use, illegal behaviour, and risky driving. Each of these behaviors provides an interesting lens through which to examine questions about the influence of environmental and individual factors on adolescents, so to explore the prevalence and risk factors of each of these behaviors among population subgroups and the developmental course typical for each is crucial.

The ninth challenge was about keeping adolescents safe. A billion adolescents engage into wrong company and bad habits due to lack of awareness about such topics related to substance abuse, smoking, sexuality and others. 

Protecting the youth

Every year, more than 1 million adolescents (between the ages of 10-19) see their lives come to an end and the leading causes of youth mortality are majorly motor vehicle accidents, HIV, suicide, and interpersonal violence. These risks are augmented by the misuse of alcohol, tobacco, drugs, lack of physical activity, lack of resources and education and maltreatment. In this year, World Health Organization (WHO) will strive to promote adolescents’ well-being by issuing a new guidance for policymakers, and health professionals called Helping Adolescents Thrive.

Key strategies should be developed and actions should be taken to strengthen nation’s health sector for adolescents.

Over to you

WHO also mentioned other challenges including access to dangerous products especially unsafe foods, epidemics like yellow fever, Zika and haemorrhagic fevers in addition to keeping adolescents safe. The report mentioned that all the challenges in this list demand a response from more than just the health sector as they are all urgent and some interlinked.