500 Secondary School Students Pregnant in Benin COVID-19 Lockdown

More than 500 pregnancies were recorded in secondary schools of Benin’s northeastern department of Borgou during the 2019-2020 school year, the Beninese news agency (ABP) reported from Cotonou.

“Altogether, 547 out of 36,487 school girls regularly registered were pregnant during the 2019-2020 school year as against 431 cases in 2018-2019,” ABP reported, quoting Thomas Adam, a Representative of the child protection department of Secondary education and professional and technical training ministry.

Adam attributed the increase in the cases of pregnancies to the long cessation of classes observed during the coronavirus pandemic.

Although no strategy linked to the phenomenon was yet made public, several analysts of the Beninese society fear that the crisis linked to the COVID-19 affected the measures taken to eradicate early pregnancies in schools.