Zero Adolecence Pregnancy (ZAP)
"Zero Adolescent Pregnancies (ZAP)" is a program that started in Upstate New York to combat a large increase in adolescent pregnancies. Originally started as a cooperative effort of the Cortland Rotary Club, Cortland County Health Department and the Catholic Charities, the program has been a main stay of Cortland County schools to combat this adolescent pregnancy plague. Teenage pregnancies went from being the county in New York State with the highest incidence of adolescent pregnancies to the county with the lowest incidence.
In many of the hospitals of Latin America, births to girls 15 years of age and less is 40 to 60% of all births. This has created much concern among Latin American Rotarians because teenage pregnancies often are accompanied by an increase in alcohol use, illicit drugs, sexually transmitted diseases; especially an increase in the incidence of HIV/AIDS. Low birth weights of babies and high incidence of poverty in adolescent mothers is common. Rotarians and local community leaders alike have been pleased to start to use ZAP in their schools and other community programs for adolescent populations. Many newspapers will print the summary of the ZAP curriculum for the school week in the Friday news so the entire community will have access to the material and parents will know what their children have been taught.
ZAP is now being incorporated with a program for voluntary counseling and testing of adolescents for HIV in high schools. It has been used in Argentina , Paraguay , Brazil and Mexico. After students are taught the dangers of the transmission of HIV, the HIV test done on oral fluids (from the mouth) is provided to all the students in the class. Students found to be infected early in the development of the disease of HIV can be treated to provide the students with 20-30 years of productive life, a lower blood level of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) so they will be less infective to others if they do not practice safe sex, and mother to child transmission of HIV can be nearly eliminated.
Zero Adolescent Pregnancies (ZAP) Brochure, English (PDF 4.28MB)
Zero Adolescent Pregnancies (ZAP) Brochure, Spanish (PDF 1MB)
Page Updated: June 20, 2009
