FPATT ready to engage Education Ministry on sex ed

“Despite efforts to encourage young people to delay sexual activity, Da Costa-Martinez said, “young people are sexually active.” Noting the need to scale up the work that is being done, there is need to act, she said, “on a focused strategy about what we all need to do about the manifest links between inadequate education, early sexual activity and the negative economic and health outcomes.” The question that remains, she said in a statement, “is whether we have the Cabinet-level leadership and decisiveness to do what is needed in the national interest.” Noting that FPATT was ready to engage with the Education Ministry to nurture children in a holistic manner, Da Costa-Martinez said, continued discussion without action is to abdicate responsibility to the children.

Staging a one-time conference on “Sexually Transmitted Diseases in Schools” is not a comprehensive response to the issues at hand, she said.

She noted that Caribbean Development Research Services study done in October 2013 on public attitudes on sexual and reproductive health, child sexual and physical abuse, domestic violence and stigma and discrimination related to HIV and homophobia showed that 83 percent of the population agreed with teaching age-appropriate sex and sexuality education in secondary schools.

The recently reconstituted National AIDS Coordinating Committee, she said, “must step up and take on its leadership role in implementing appropriate prevention strategies to address this dearth of information.” The Ministerial Declaration “Preventing through Education”, at which Government was represented and which was approved in Mexico City in August 2008 at the 1st Meeting of Ministers of Health and Education to Stop HIV in Latin America and the Caribbean, she said, should guide initiatives.

At that meeting, the ministers agreed to implement and/ or strengthen multi-sectoral strategies of comprehensive sexuality education and promotion of sexual health. This included HIV/STI prevention, and to ensure that health services provide effective access to counselling and testing for HIV and Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) including clinical, condoms and education in their correct and consistent use, and counselling about reproductive decisions.

Agreeing with Education Minister Anthony Garcia’s comments that parents play an essential role, she said, parents or guardians know that it was not an easy task in a fast-changing world and not all parents have the necessary tools to do so.

Alarm expressed by the public on learning recently that over 300 children of school age were diagnosed with sexually transmitted infections between 2012 and 2015, she said, “was mind-boggling”, but it was in keeping with what the local statistics.

The World Health Organisation Global School Health Survey of 2011 noted that in TT, 27 percent of young people between 13 to 15 years had sexual intercourse. It showed that multiple partnerships were common among the 15 to 24 age groups with 52 percent of boys and 33 percent of girls reporting more than one sexual partners during the year of the survey. Transactional sex was also high among this group with 42 percent reporting exchanging sex for gifts, favours or cash.

This has significant impact for teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections including HIV, she said.

Repeated calls by FPATT, National Parent Teachers Association (NPTA), faith-based organisations and other non-governmental organisations, expressing support for including comprehensive sexuality education in the primary and secondary curricula, she said, has public support.

They have been shouldering the responsibility for preventing young people from becoming one of those statistics, and equipping them for adult life.

The Collaborative HIV/ AIDS Management Programme (CHAMP), an HIV prevention programme for adolescents, is an initiative of FPATT, which has been adopted by the Anglican Church. It includes parents in an holistic education and counselling programme about sexuality, including HIV, she said, yet teenage pregnancy and HIV prevalence among young people remain unacceptably high.

Noting that Education Ministry in 2014 reported an average of 2,500 adolescent girls becoming pregnant each year in school, she said, the Medical Chief of Staff in the Ministry of Health noted that in one local hospital, 74 girls under the age of 16 gave birth in 2015.

He called for “the need to address contraceptives to prevent teenage pregnancy.”