Teenage pregnancies remain a serious predicament
despite various measures to backtrack the problem. It has been noted with great
concern that teenage pregnancies are predominant in rural areas due to lack of SRH
information and awareness on the risk factors.
A lot of cases concerning teen pregnancies have
been recorded in the rural areas due to cultural beliefs and norms that are
inherent among people of the rural communities. Worse still, discussion of
sexual reproductive issues in family settings is generally considered a taboo.
Parents in rural areas still consider sex education as the responsibility of teachers
and initiation ceremony counsellors, and some even consider it as a sin.
Conversely, the truth of the matter is that it is
everyone’s responsibility to provide necessary and accurate SRH information to
adolescent boys and girls. In this way, our society will help the youth to be
in a position to make informed decisions and choices and eventually reduce cases
of teen pregnancies. In some instances, the youth are imparted with wrong SRH
information by initiation ceremony counsellors thereby making them vulnerable
and prone to a lot more SRH risk factors.
In schools, sex education is not given enough
time and attention. Boys and Girls get a lot of information pertaining to their
sexuality from their peers–who are also less informed. The scenario is quite
different in urban areas as there are wide and diverse ways of getting
information. This is because circulation of newspapers and magazines is
targeted for the urban dwellers and the urban youth are more exposed to a
number of media than their rural counterparts.
Furthermore, in some instances, teachers in rural
areas are also culturally bound to be explicit in teaching sex education.
Consequentially, children are left with more questions than answers.
A number of studies that have been conducted in several schools show that
out of 200 girls who drop out of school, a total of about 101girls dropout of
school due to early pregnancies. Out of
this total number, 40(39.6%) of these are girls from urban schools and
61(60.4%) are from rural schools.
72 girls indicated that peer Pressure was the main cause of their early
pregnancy and of the total number, 47(65.3%) are from urban schools and
25(34.7%) are from rural schools.
From this research, it shows that there is need
to support adolescent boys and girls who live in rural areas with comprehensive
sexual and reproductive health education. In addition to this, there is need to
build the capacity of various institutions at community level so that they
should intensify advocacy and raise awareness on adolescent sexual reproductive health
issues. Most institutions target only the urban youth leaving out those who
live in rural areas.
YONECO is one of the organizations that are
spearheading advocacy and empowerment of the youth on SRH issues in both urban
and rural areas of Malawi.
2 comments:
SRH education is quite a challenging task in nearly all countries. Often involves walking a fine line between opening up young minds and not stepping on toes when it comes to cultural beliefs.
there is in need to educate initiation counsellors about SRHR so that they can give clear information about this,
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