Violence during these critical formative years can cause profound and lasting harm, it needs to be taken more seriously as a public health issue. The World Health Organisation (WHO) says close to 19 million adolescent girls will have experienced physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence by the time they turn 20 years old.This is contained in a statement released by the WHO on Tuesday from a new analysis published in The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health. It added that one to six or 16% of adolescent girls also experienced such intimate partner violence in the past year. Dr Pascale Allo…