KARACHI: Reproductive health remains a least understood issue
KARACHI, Feb 23: Despite enhanced accessibility to updated modes of information and knowledge, local adolescents continue to have deeply-ingrained myths and wrong perceptions about basic personal hygiene, reproductive health and the relevant ailments.
A study by postgraduate doctors of the Sobhraj Maternity Hospital, to assess the degree of awareness among local girl students (14 to 15 years) regarding puberty-related physiological changes and possible infections, regrets the rampant disregard for knowledge about reproductive health at local schools on the part of both teachers and administrations.
Dr Shabeen Naz Masood, consultant gynaecologist and medical superintendent of the SMH, giving details of the exercise, said that 65 per cent to 70 per cent of the interviewees had inadequate information about the subject.
She also noticed with concern that not much difference was found between the level of information reflected by girls of the same age group during a similar exercise in 1998 and what was observed in January this year. The activity undertaken at selected private and government schools this year revealed that 88 per cent of the interviewees thought menstruation unhealthy and a source of sickness, compared with the 90 per cent found to hold the same belief in 1998.
Unnecessary caution during the condition at the cost of personal hygiene and affecting routine life was supported by 40 per cent to 65 per cent of students from both private and public sector institutions, previously the number stood at 61 per cent and 93 per cent.
Around 55 per cent of the girls believed that AIDS could be contracted through handshakes; 22.6 per cent thought that eating in the same plate was not safe; 4.76 per cent thought studying and working in the same room was dangerous. Hundred per cent of the interviewees held the same beliefs five years back.
Dr Shabeen Naz said that post-counselling assessments reflected a sharp improvement in the perceptions of the girls regarding basic facts.
The gynaecologists regretted that the needs of 30 million adolescents, constituting 22 per cent of the total population of the country, were generally neglected with little provision for counselling and guidance during the most crucial phase of their life.
She informed that a reproductive health clinic for adolescents had been introduced at the Sobhraj Maternity Hospital. She said that tertiary care hospitals or maternity clinics were not feasible options and that facility must be available at basic health-care units across the country.
This, she said, must be efficiently complimented through proper schooling facilities for all children, without any discrimination against the girl child.
“It is important to remember that women educated for one year can help reduce perinatal and maternal mortality by 10 years,” she said and added that compulsory education for girls up to matric could prevent unnecessary and most painful deaths by 100 per cent.
She strongly recommended that a reproductive health education programme be started in all schools and the issue be handled very sensibly.
“Parents and teachers must be informed about the importance of the subject by personal meetings and communication,” the senior gynaecologist said referring to certain reservation expressed by the authorities concerned as well as parents regarding the exercise undertaken by the SMH.
She said the programme should have a friendly approach and inhibitions of both students and teachers could be overcome by starting milder subjects of physiology and menstruation.
She said that social and legal rights must be included in the curriculum and information regarding drugs, pregnancy, contraception and sexually transmitted diseases should be introduced at the matric-level.—APP
