DAVAO City government and partner agencies are developing a standard referral system for pregnant girls aged 16 and younger and plan to analyze the city’s adolescent pregnancy cases in 2024, the Commission on Population and Development in Davao Region (CPD-Davao) said.
The initiatives emerged from a coordinative meeting on early pregnancy among children and adolescents organized by the city government and the City Social Welfare and Development Office (CSWDO) on October 15, 2026, at the CSWDO Building on Magallanes Street, CPD-Davao said in a Facebook post on Oct. 19.
Fifteen representatives attended the meeting, including officials from CPD-Davao, the Department of Social Welfare and Development Field Office 11 ((DSWD-Davao), the Southern Philippines Medical Center Center for Teens, the city’s Integrated Gender and Development Division, the City Health Office and its Population Division, the Sangguniang Kabataan, and the Indigenous Peoples Mandatory Representative.
The proposed referral protocol aims to improve coordination among health facilities, social welfare offices, and other service providers to ensure pregnant girls aged 16 and younger receive timely assessments, appropriate referrals, and continuous care.
The planned analysis of the city’s 2024 cases will draw on Civil Registration and Vital Statistics data and the Community-Based Monitoring System to examine factors such as household arrangements and the fathers’ ages.
CPD-Davao Regional Director Jeff Fuentes emphasized the need to turn available data into evidence that can guide interventions for adolescents and their families. He also called for programs tailored to young people’s actual circumstances in their respective communities, the agency said.
Pregnancies among girls aged 10 to 14 rise
In a separate announcement, CPD-Davao said Fuentes met with DSWD-Davao Regional Director Benchie Gonzales and Assistant Regional Director for Operations Atty. Robert Kevin Evangelista to strengthen referral and case management for girls aged 10 to 14 who become pregnant.
The agencies discussed integrating DSWD’s ProtecTEEN Program into broader adolescent health initiatives, alongside efforts to prevent child, early, and forced marriages and unions and enforce Republic Act 11596, which prohibits child marriage.
They also explored a social protection framework that local government units could adopt to identify, report, refer, and manage cases involving children at risk.
Pregnancies among girls aged 10 to 14 in the Davao Region rose to 284 in 2024 from 240 in 2022, CPD-Davao earlier reported, citing Philippine Statistics Authority civil registration data. Among cases with reported information on the fathers’ ages, 87 percent involved adult men.
“Even a single case of a 10- to 14-year-old getting pregnant is already alarming,” Fuentes said in August. “This is not purely a health issue, but a social protection issue. As a society, we are failing in protecting our children.”
The region also recorded the country’s highest share of pregnancies among girls younger than 15, at 2.4 percent, CPD reported in September.
“We are seeing a very disturbing situation. These predators are adults preying on these 10 to 14-year-olds. The challenge here is we really have to know the stories behind the 10 to 14 age group so that we can create a more appropriate intervention,” Fuentes said then. GRS