SAIMA AKTER ESHA

Only 14 years old, Eka Akhter Munni lay in the gynaecology ward of Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH), her face marked by exhaustion and despair.

She was brought to the hospital from Kamrangirchar’s Battery Ghat slum, and this is not her first stay here. Munni has just given birth to her second child and is now under treatment in the postnatal ward.

Her mother, sitting beside her, said, “The doctor said she has low blood, so she feels very tired and weak. She also had seizures during the pregnancy. After giving birth, she was bleeding a lot.”

“It wasn’t a planned pregnancy. The baby was born very small,” the mother added.

A few doors away, in the prenatal ward of DMCH, 17-year-old Tamanna Akhter Sweety has made the long journey from Bikrampur. This is also her second pregnancy, complicated by a serious condition.

“There is water in my kidneys. Doctors said the pregnancy has worsened my situation,” Tamanna said.

These are not rare exceptions. Many underage girls across the country continue to face severe health risks due to pregnancy, long before they are old enough to understand what motherhood means. Such risks affect two generations at once -- adolescent mothers and their newborns.

According to the Bangladesh Sample Vital Statistics 2023, the marriage rate among girls aged 15–19 stands at 99.31 per 1,000, while girls aged 10–14 face a marriage rate of 20.20 per 1,000.

During visits to DMCH, Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College, Mohammadpur Fertility Services & Training Centre (MFTSC) and the Urban Health Centre in Pallabi, adolescent mothers were found in almost every gynaecology ward.

Doctors report that they encounter such cases regularly.

Dr Suchitra Saha, head of the infertility department at MFSTC, said underage mothers are frequently admitted with complications.

“These young girls often suffer from anaemia, eclampsia and malnutrition because they themselves are children. Their babies are also born underweight, with poor brain development. These girls’ pelvises are not fully developed, so pregnancy and delivery become life-threatening,” she said.

She added that home births, often encouraged by family members, further increase the risks for both mother and child.

Dr Nahid Parvin, medical officer at the gynaecology unit of Pallabi Urban Health Centre, highlighted the emotional struggles many adolescent mothers face. She said many of them cannot properly care for their newborns or form emotional bonds with them.

Bangladesh continues to have the highest prevalence of child marriage in South Asia, according to the UNFPA-Unicef Global Programme to End Child Marriage 2024, despite decades of intervention.

While the rate has halved since 1970, disruptions in 2024 -- including political unrest, school closures and natural disasters -- have increased girls’ vulnerability to early marriage and adolescent pregnancy, it said.

Mahbub-UL-Alam, programme manager at the Directorate General of Family Planning (DGFP) and

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