Child marriage is a crippling medical and social burden to women in India and poses a demographic threat to the entire world, health experts warned in The Lancet yesterday.
Specialists in public health from India and the US looked at data for 22,807 women aged 20 to 24, selected from a geographical and social cross-section of Indian society, who took part in a survey in 2005 and 2006.
A total of 44.5 percent of the women had been wed by the time they were 18, set as the legal age for marriage since 1978. Of these, 22.6 percent had been married before the age of 16 and 2.6 percent before the age of 13.
Women who had been child brides were 37 percent likelier not to have used contraception before their first child was born; seven times likelier to have three or more births; and three times likelier to have a repeat childbirth in less than 24 months.
They were also more than twice as likely to have multiple unwanted pregnancies, nearly 50 percent likelier to have an abortion and more than six times likelier to seek sterilization compared with counterparts who had married after the age of 18.
They also at greater risk of a fistula — a tear in the genital tract — as well as pregnancy complications and death and sickness as a result of childbirth.
“Child marriage has serious consequences for national development, stunting education and vocational opportunities for a large sector of the population,” say the paper’s authors, led by Anita Raj, a doctor at Boston University School of Public Health in Massachusetts. “Furthermore, marriage at a very young age has grave health consequences for both the young women and their children.”
The paper gives the lie to those who claim that the practice would shrivel as a result of India’s rising prosperity and national policies aimed at preventing early marriage and encouraging access to contraception, education and economic opportunities for women.
A survey conducted in 1998 and 1999 estimated that 50 percent of Indian women aged 20 to 24 were married as children, which means that the phenomenon has retreated by just a fraction. The paper calls for efforts against child marriage to be beefed up, especially in rural areas.
“These results suggest that neither recent progress in economic and women’s development, nor existing policy or programmatic efforts to prevent child marriage and promote maternal and child health have been sufficient to reduce the prevalence of child marriage in India to that of most other developing nations,” it says.
The legal age of marriage in India is 18 years old for women and 21 years old for men.
In a commentary also published by The Lancet, fertility expert Vinita Salvi of the King Edward Memorial Hospital in Mumbai said legislation against child marriage in India “exists largely on paper.”
The country has 1.15 billion people, a phenomenon that was detrimental “not only for India but also for the entire world,” and child marriage played an important role in the demographic surge, Salvi said.
“Marriage at such ages has enormous adverse implications, not just for women’s health and empowerment in general, but also for humankind in the long term,” Salvi said.
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
YELLOW SHIRTS: Many protesters were associated with pro-royalist groups that had previously supported the ouster of Paetongtarn’s father, Thaksin, in 2006 Protesters rallied on Saturday in the Thai capital to demand the resignation of court-suspended Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and in support of the armed forces following a violent border dispute with Cambodia that killed more than three dozen people and displaced more than 260,000. Gathered at Bangkok’s Victory Monument despite soaring temperatures, many sang patriotic songs and listened to speeches denouncing Paetongtarn and her father, former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and voiced their backing of the country’s army, which has always retained substantial power in the Southeast Asian country. Police said there were about 2,000 protesters by mid-afternoon, although
MOGAMI-CLASS FRIGATES: The deal is a ‘big step toward elevating national security cooperation with Australia, which is our special strategic partner,’ a Japanese official said Australia is to upgrade its navy with 11 Mogami-class frigates built by Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles said yesterday. Billed as Japan’s biggest defense export deal since World War II, Australia is to pay US$6 billion over the next 10 years to acquire the fleet of stealth frigates. Australia is in the midst of a major military restructure, bolstering its navy with long-range firepower in an effort to deter China. It is striving to expand its fleet of major warships from 11 to 26 over the next decade. “This is clearly the biggest defense-industry agreement that has ever
RSS