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Depression top cause of illness in world’s teens

This was predominantly in Africa, at a time when HIV-related deaths were decreasing in all other population groups.

“We must not let up on efforts to promote and safeguard the sexual and reproductive health of adolescents, including HIV,” said WHO scientist Jane Ferguson, lead author of the report.

For adolescent girls alone, the second-biggest killer after suicide was complications during childbirth.

That was despite major progress on that front, WHO said, with death-rates plummeting since 2000 — by 57 percent in Asia, 50 percent in the Middle East and 37 percent in Africa.

Other infectious disease also remained major killers, despite marked successes such as a 90-percent decline in death and disability from measles in Africa over the past decade, thanks to childhood vaccination.

Common infectious diseases that have been a focus for action in young children were among the hardest-hitting.

For example, diarrhoea and lower respiratory tract infections ranked second and fourth among causes of death in 10 to 14-year-olds.

Combined with meningitis, these conditions accounted for 18 percent of all deaths in this age group, little changed from 2000, WHO said.

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