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KUALA LUMPUR -  Many countries now have sexual health education in school, but teachers often focus on the health and biological side of the topic and leave out the very issue they need to address – sexuality, say experts at a regional conference here in November.

   Teachers are wary of talking about sex with young people because they are uncomfortable with the subject or fear encouraging – or being seen as encouraging -- youngsters to have sex at an early age, says Hathairat Suda, senior programme assistant with the Bangkok-based Programme for Appropriate Technology on Health (PATH).

   “(But) If you wait to talk about sex with your children at the late age, it is might be too late since your children might be already at risk of reproductive health and sexual health problems,” Hathairat said at the 3rd Asia-Pacific Conference on Reproductive and Sexual Health that ended Sunday.

   The need to have education about reproductive and sexual health early – especially during adolescence -- has been widely discussed here, given that young people in Asia are having their first sexual experiences earlier than ever and information is needed to keep them from risky behaviour.

   But in many Asian countries, sex is taboo for public discussion, often due to social, cultural and religious factors.

   Some groups at the same time are trying more innovative ways of getting messages about reproductive health across – through the use of television shows in Malaysia, pushed by Marina Mahathir, daughter of former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, to the use of theatre in the Philippines, to lobbying by progressive religious groups in parts of Indonesia.

   But it takes creativity -- and pragmatism. Indonesia’s Jery Lohy says the programme he helps with among Christian youngsters manages to convey sensitive information about safer sex, but “we can’t say the word ‘sexual’. We just say biological, or reproductive health.”

   In Sri Lanka, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) is trying to carry out a pilot project on teaching sex education to children the first grade and building on these sex-education messages in an appropriate fashion for each grade level thereafter.

   “We have to start since they are young so that they will gradually familiar with the issue by starting with health issues like cleanliness for grade one and then add more messages in the upper grades and finally talk about safer sex,” said Asela Ramjet Kakugampitiya, UNFPA’s monitoring and evaluation officer.
   “However, we are not sure whether we can talk directly about safe sex. Sex education is also a controversial   issue in our country too,” he said.

   When a candid teen manual on sexuality was published a few years ago in Thailand, it drew the wrath of many conservatives, from academic persons to policymakers who said it promoted promiscuity and the wrong values.

   The furore showed that while it has become an option for some schools to teach sex education, its implementation has not always been carried out successfully. Often, sex education classes in Thailand emphasise anatomy and biological topics.

   In Vietnam, sex education is part of biology class for high school students. But starting from Grade 6, students can learn about the body parts and the reproductive system.

   In Laos, there are no direct lessons on sex education but it is included in biology subject in high school that discusses body parts and the reproductive system. In Burma, there are no lessons about sex education at all.

   While local beliefs and culture can be a barrier for intervention on safer sex, statistics cited during the conference point to the need for better information on reproductive and sexual health at a young age.

   One million women have died in eight Asian countries alone due to unsafe abortion, pregnancy or childbirth, according to a just-released report on progress on the reproductive and sexual health goals in the decade since the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo.

   Millions more women and young people have suffered due to unsafe abortion and childbirth, and lack of access to respectful and caring quality health services, added the study by the Kuala Lumpur-based Asia-Pacific Resource and Research Centre for Women (ARROW) covering Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan and the Philippines.

   The failure of sex education is part of the causes of unsafe abortion and other problems, says Rashidah Abdullah, co-founder of ARROW and a member of its board of directors.

   People need to understand that sex education it s not only about sexual intercourse and safer sex, but about life, reproductive health campaigners stressed.

   Haithairat listed six factors in sex education: discussions of organs linked to reproductive health, relationships with partners and other people, communication skills, understanding of the socio-cultural context, acceptance of the diversity of human behaviour and sexual orientation, and prevention and health care.

   But sex education classes often touch only on two of these points – biology and prevention and health care.
 

   “All points should come together. If you know how your body works and how you can protect yourself from disease but you don’t know the level of your relationships and don’t know how to communicate with your partner for safer sex, it is not useful at all,” Haithairat added. (END/IPSAP/JS/05)