Myanmar to prevent younger-age marriage

YANGON - Myanmar Vice-President Dr. Sai Mauk Kham has called for taking measures to prevent marriage under 18 years of age and having pregnancy before 20 years old and for assisting in reducing unwanted teenage pregnancy, official media reported Friday.

In Myanmar, the population of women aged between 15 and 19 has reached about 2.9 million out of a total population of about 60 million. Out of 1,000 aged between 15 and 19, 17 girls gave birth annually according to reproductive health survey over the past five years, Sai told a function on population in Nay Pyi Taw.

Myanmar has been implementing the tasks for reproductive health adopted at the International Conference on Population and Development as part of its efforts for reducing mortality rate of children, especially aged under one and five, and mortality rate of pregnant mothers.

He attributed to having abundant human resources in Myanmar to decreasing in birth rate and increasing in life expectancy since decades ago and the population of labor age is about two times higher than dependent population in the country.

He stressed the need for preparation to solve upcoming challenges of socio-economic issues as the country's aged population is rapidly increasing which is expected to reach 10 percent of the country's population in 2015.

Meanwhile, Myanmar will conduct population and housing census in 2014 in line with international standard with technical support of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) following the last census in 1983.