The Society for the Study of Women Health (SSWH) a research institution in partnership with Agency for the Development of Women and Children (ADWAC) and funding from International Development Research Centre of Canada, are implementing a five years Implementation Research Project dubbed: Preventing Early Marriage in the Rural Gambia; Testing an intervention and particularly in Lower Baddibou. Early marriage has been a global concern, despite efforts by different actors.
The Local Steering Committee has been instituted and Amie Jobe Youth Coordinator and Child Safe Guarding Focal Point of Child Protection Alliance as chairperson and Haruna Kuyateh of Reporter as Secretary to the committee.
Dr. Mat Lowe Director of Society for the Study of Women Health and Principal Investigator noted that the study aim to determine the factors that either led to a decline in or are perpetuating early marriage in Lower Baddibou District.
Research has shown that globally 15million girls married before they reach the age of 18. Expose them to risk of multiple pregnancies, maternal morbidity and mortality, and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS. Despite the associated consequences and laws against it, early marriage remains a global concern.
In The Gambia, early marriage declined from 58% to 30% over the last two decades. However, little is known about the factors responsible for the decline.
The project will adopt three methodology of informing the intervention on the scalable strategies to improve behavior and attitudinal changes on the lives of all actors in combating early marriage.
The phase 1 will implore cross sectional household survey, phase 2 analyze the data generate to inform the design of the package of intervention in Lower and Central Baddibou districts and Phase 3 Access the effects of package of intervention.
It is evident that very studies have been conducted to find out what and how local factors influence decisions about early marriage in rural Gambian communities.
Musa Jobe, Financial Manager of ADWAC call for concerted efforts of Local Steering Committee to support the project towards the realization attaining set objective. He noted that the meeting will help to guide on the implementation of project.
Author: Haruna Kuyateh, in NBR
