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Some of the issues that came up were that drug abuse was rampant among youths. This was blamed on lack of parental guidance. I talked about some of the adolescent behaviours that lead to health complications.
After the Inyathi High School sex scandal where nine pupils were suspended from school last week for allegedly having sex within the school premises, many arguments were raised by parents, health service providers, teachers and concerned citizens.
The nine, who are four boys and five girls, were some of the 16 boys and an unknown number of girls who took advantage of laxity in school rules to indulge in sex.
Although the majority of them were lucky to escape with corporal punishment, this should be a lesson to parents and guardians that schools are no longer as “holy and safe a haven” as they used to be, hence the need for concerted efforts to recreate a good environment for children.
What is painful even to the authorities and parents is the fact that the sex saga at Inyathi High School has already disturbed preparations for the forthcoming public examinations. Some of the pupils are likely to be expelled or excluded from school if found guilty of the alleged misdemeanours.
In light of this development, I decided that this week’s edition should focus on the challenges that adolescents face in terms of their sexual and reproductive health and rights issues and the interventions that could be made to ensure they are safe.
What happened at Inyathi High School should have been expected because youths are capable of anything when they enter into puberty.
Adolescence is a transitional period in the life of a child where he or she starts developing changes both physically and biologically. This is the teenage stage but nowadays children even younger than 10 also start developing signs of puberty and hence start indulging in sexual activities.
This is a huge challenge the society should deal with nowadays especially with HIV and Aids and other socio-health consequences.
Signs of puberty in children include physical changes on their bodies, hormonal developments and this is the time when mental illness can strike children as many unusual developments take place on them which might force them to do the unbelievable.
The question is — how are we prepared as a country to promote sexual and reproductive health and rights issues? How do we break cross-cultural issues that make it taboo for parents to discuss such issues with their children?
To help focus on some of the issues I talked to the Southern Africa HIV and Aids Information Dissemination Services (SAfAIDS) Media Technical Advisor, Mrs Tariro Chikumbirike about some of the interventions that could be harnessed to improve sexual and reproductive health and rights of adolescents.
Mrs Chikumbirike was in Bulawayo last week for a Media Briefing Workshop on sexual and reproductive health and rights.
She said there should be open discussions on issues pertaining to sexual rights and behaviour of children if the society was to meet its targets of the Millennium Development Goals.
“The challenge is on us as society to talk openly about sexual health issues. Gone are the days when people would say there are aunties or uncles to discuss such issues with children. These days even mothers and fathers should be able to discuss these issues with their children and advise them about sexual behaviour and some of the dangers that are there,” she said.
“We need to be asking ourselves whether we really want our children to die of Aids because if we do not discuss these subjects with them we are making them vulnerable.
“Remember they should make the right choice and decisions in life and it is up to society now to engage and come up with strategies of making sure adolescents are not left out of interventions and programming.”
Mrs Chikumbirike said there was a missing link in service provision where most of the services were not packaged with adolescents in mind.
This is true because often health centres are literally scary for youths.
Society, she said, still considers it taboo for sexual health issues to be discussed with children or such services to be made available to them.
Mrs Chikumbirike said the challenge was now with society to ensure a friendly environment at schools, which involves sexual health information and open education because information blackout leads to pupils experimenting at their own peril.
“We should assist school authorities by coming up with policies that are friendly in terms of sexual health. The role of teachers as a link between pupils and parents should be felt. Teachers and adolescents should be equipped equally because teachers, as second parents, have a role to play in terms of counselling and guidance. Let us make it easier for teachers so that they play their role,” she said.
Schools should be a second home for children. Parents should be assured of their children’s health and safety while at school.
Children spend nine months of their year at school and therefore their day-to-day upbringing is largely influenced by school and their teachers to a certain extent.
“Nothing for us without us” is one of the slogans used by service providers when dealing with adolescent issues suggesting that they should be consulted and involved when dealing with health issues affecting them.
The question then is, with such delinquent behaviour, should the children be consulted or asked about how they want to be treated and served or should they be given corporal punishment whenever they misbehave?
The suggestion is that children misbehave because some of the intervention programming is irrelevant to them.
This might be true, though, to a limited extent especially when focusing on differences in backgrounds where intervention for a Christian society is different from that of Moslems, or rural community from urban community.
“It is not a secret that given a half chance pupils would indulge in sexual activities. With such things happening one wonders whether it is not proper to introduce condoms in school,” said a teacher.
The general feeling of parents and society is that delinquency does not end by punishing pupils but society should come up with concrete solutions to challenges facing the youths.
Schools have a reputation to protect, parents have personalities to protect and children have a future to build so everyone has a role to play.
Online Reporter