Britain has the highest teen pregnancy rate in Western Europe, new figures showed today. Only Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia have a bigger problem with girls aged 15-19 giving birth, the Office for National Statistics said. Tackling high levels of teenage pregnancies is linked to the struggle to break the cycle of ill-health and poverty, the ONS said. Scroll down for video The UK has one of the highest rates of pregnancies among 15-19-year-olds in Europe, the new figures from the Office for National Statistics show According to the study into how European countries compare, the UK birth rate among women aged 15-19 was higher than the average across the whole of the 28 countries in the European Union.
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19.7 births per 1,000 women aged 15-19 in the UK in 2012, study shows
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Figure is much higher than the EU average of only 12.6 births per 1,000
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Worldwide figures show Switzerland had the lowest rate at 3.4 births
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The highest teen pregnancy rate was in Azerbaijan at 50.0 births
The UK teenage birth rate is down by more than a quarter (26.8 per cent) since 2004 compared to a fall of almost one fifth (18.2 per cent) across the @placeholder as a whole.