KUCHING, Feb 9: The Ministry of Women, Early Childhood and Community Wellbeing Development welcomes the new baby hatch service facility established by Borneo Medical Centre.
Its minister, Dato Sri Fatimah Abdullah, says this baby hatch service and facility would assist teenage mothers in wanting to deliver and keep their newborns in a conducive environment.
“Such services and facilities will also help to conceal the teenage mother’s identity and to make it more discrete,” she said.
“This service provided by BMC is a piece of good news for the ministry and our One Stop Teenage Pregnancy Committee (OSTPC) members, as this service used to be provided by KPJ Medical Centre.
“But the medical centre halted the services and the facility after moving to a new location in the city,” she added.
She said this after chairing the first Sarawak 2023 key performance index (KPI) OSTPC meeting at her ministry today.
Fatimah also pointed out that the Welfare Department is always ready to assist and can be contacted if there is a teenage pregnancy issue.
“When the teenage mother is almost due in her pregnancy, and about to give birth, she can be placed in their Taman Sri Puteri facility for counselling.
“Our Welfare Department staff will attend to the teenager mother and help her seek further medical management,” she said.
Meanwhile, according to Fatimah, the statistics of the Sarawak Health Department show a decreasing trend in the number of teenage pregnancy cases, which has dropped by 38.09 per cent or 945 cases from 2,481 cases in 2016 to 1,536 cases in 2022.
“The percentage of pregnant teenagers from the total number of new antenatal cases also showed a downward trend of 1.6 per cent between 2016 (6.4 per cent ) and 2022 (4.8 per cent),” she said. — DayakDaily
