Adolescent pregnancy: a comparative study between mothers who use public and private health systems

This is a comparative and descriptive study of adolescent mothers who were attended in three maternities of the public health system and three private maternities in a city in São Paulo, Brazil, between 2000 and 2002. This study aimed to compare the profile of mothers attended in both systems. The database of Ribeirão Preto was used and 5,286 adolescent mothers between 10 and 19 years old were selected according to type of delivery, level of instruction, number of prenatal consultations and parity. We found that the users of the public health system had less prenatal consultations, lower level of education, higher parity and the vaginal delivery was most frequent. The users of the private health system, on the contrary, had more prenatal consultations, higher level of instruction, and primiparity and cesarean sections were more frequent.