Murrumbigee Local Health District areas record teen births at triple the national rate

A new report into adolescent fertility rates by Family Planning NSW found that while the national rate had halved in the last 10 years, 14 regional and rural local government areas (LGA) saw a rise in babies born to teenage parents from 2011 to 2020.

Of those, eight LGAs were located in the Murrumbidgee Local Health District, and include Wagga, Temora, Narrandera and Albury.

Wagga's adolescent fertility rate reached more than 22 live births per 1000 people aged 15-19 in 2020, almost triple the state and national average of eight.

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In the Narrandera LGA, the rate was 45 live births per 1000 people in the same age bracket.

For places like Narrandera which has a small female population and number of births per year, the live birth rate does fluctuate year on year.

Family Planning NSW chief executive Adjunct Professor Ann Brassil said the rise was linked to a lack of sexual health education and contraception services.

"We know there are highly effective forms of contraception available, but we continue to have difficulty getting appropriate numbers of doctors upskilled to offer long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs), such as contraceptive implants and IUDs across regional and rural NSW," she said.

"We want there to be a shift in the provision of these contraceptives."

Adj Prof Brassil said a new project hopes to not only train registered nurses how to insert long-acting reversible contraceptives like the intrauterine device and the birth control implant.

Named the SEARCH project, it also hopes to make providing reproductive services financially viable for nurses by ensuring they are able to claim the cost of insertions on medicare.

Adj Prof Brassil said the MLHD had signed a memorandum of understanding regarding the project.

"We're really keen to begin working with health services in regional NSW," she said.

"We've got the evidence, now we need to act."

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