admin
Monica Cheru Mpambawashe Lifestyle Editor
MEDICINES Control Authority of Zimbabwe director-general Ms Gugu Mahlangu’s call to allow 16-year-olds access to contraceptives has brought about much expected moral indignation from the public.
Most people who are against the move say that allowing school girls access to contraceptives is tantamount to licensing our daughters to have sex against all principles that we stand for as a society.
I personally believe that a lot of the reactions are based on emotions and not logic.
We need to understand why this position has been reached before we can decide whether it is sensible or not.
Let us start with statistics for figures do not lie.
According to the 2010–2011 Zimbabwe Demographic and Health Survey:
34 percent of 15-19 year old females have had sexual intercourse versus 25 percent of males in the same age group.
35–38 percent of 20–24-year-old females had had sex by their 18th birthday between 1999 and 2011 as compared to 23- 31 percent of males
23 percent of 15–19 year-old females are currently in a union, with the largest number in rural areas
23 percent of rural females 15-19-year-olds and 12 percent of their urban counterparts are mothers.
What do the figures above mean, beyond the numbers?
To start off with they show that a large number of children are having sex at an early age and we cannot hide from that.
There are many socio-economic factors behind that phenomenon.
The primary one could possibly be that we have become a society that is letting its children be raised by television and the Internet.
There is little counselling and guidance going on in most homes even in those places where both parents are present.
Very few people have made the leap from a tradition where reproductive health education was the responsibility of aunts and uncles to the modern core family structure where parents must take up that role and break taboos they were raised with themselves.
The situation is likely to be worse in single-parent set-ups and child-headed families. A reminder here that we have over 1.5 million orphans.
It is therefore totally illogical to expect our young people to have the same principles as the older generation that is failing to inculcate those same values.
Taking that argument further, are we really entitled to take the high moral ground as parents?
What kind of role models are we to our children as a society? Every day the media is full of stories of adultery and fornication perpetrated by adults from all walks of life and from all professions including the clergy.
So are we really living values ourselves that we would want to hold up for our children’s close examination?
Getting back to the figures, something else comes out; female children are indulging in sex at an earlier age than the male children.
There are various reasons for this with most activists pointing at poverty as the pushing factor.
Recently, a NGO published results of a study showing that pockets of illegal mining had the highest rates of child marriages in the country as girls from poor communities are attracted by the apparent riches of gold panners.
The figures also show that rural girls are twice more likely to be teen mothers and consequently child brides compared to their urban counterparts.
Is poverty alone a satisfactory explanation for the discrepancy?
Is it possible that the urban girl is savvier and has access to some forms of contraceptives and in some cases even reasonably safe abortion options?
For this is yet another elephant in the room that we insist on ignoring. It is an open secret that although abortions for family planning purposes are illegal in the country they are being carried out all the time by qualified personnel in official medical spaces if one can afford the price.
For others, all it takes is a trip down to neighbouring South Africa where it is as simple as walking into a centre opening such services.
Even backyard abortions are expensive with figures of $30 to $50 being the going rate. Where does this leave the girl from the disadvantaged background?
Yet another factor is that we have disheartening rates of child sexual abuse with the girl child being the biggest victim.
Some of these children are not empowered to report and stop the abuse because it is often perpetrated by a close relative who may also be a caregiver and provider.
Therefore it makes to at least allow them a chance to protect themselves from pregnancy.
High maternal death rates remain one of Zimbabwe’s obstacles to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and the authorities say that the most affected group is that of teen mothers.
But perhaps the most important point to raise is that there is already a policy effectively allowing children to access contraceptives and related services at health centres across the country.
The National Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health Strategy, 2010–2015 which is part of the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare’s National Sexual and Reproductive Health Policy is aimed at meeting needs of the target age group.
This includes access to information and services including contraceptives. One of the areas the document zeroes in is how the young people are shunning the services saying that they are not ‘friendly’.
Therefore personnel at health service centres are actively being reoriented to handle the young with professionalism and confidentiality without trying to impose their own moral beliefs on their clients.
The document also stresses that access to contraceptives alone is not going to do much to help our children make wise choices and reach right decisions.
We have to empower them through making sure that they also access all pertinent information before they can make any decisions on when to have sex.
No one is expecting schools to leave packets of oral contraceptives and condoms lying around in the girls’ restroom.
The Minister of Primary and Secondary Education, Dr Lazarus Dokora has said that the new curriculum expected to be introduced from January 2016, will encompass the teaching of life skills in a more robust manner than the current one.
This is where they should incorporate a strong reproductive health component.
For our children must know the dangers of early sex even in cases where they are using contraceptives. Cervical cancer is a worry among women and studies have linked chances of it increasing in women who suffer sexually transmitted infections, have early sexual debuts and multiple sexual partners which are all associated with teen sex.
They must also know the downside of the various contraceptives currently on the market.
And we must also teach our children that no contraceptive method is fail proof.
This is shown by the number of women who end up having to deal with unplanned parenthood yet they have access to contraceptives.
Online Reporter