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HEALTH-VIETNAM: Sex Education Falls Short of Mark, Say Students
By Tran Dinh Thanh Lam
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam, Dec 19 (IPS) - Poor teacher training and a high
incidence of teenage pregnancies and abortions are prompting experts and
educators to back reforms in the way Vietnam teaches its youth about sexual
and reproductive matters.
''I've got a boyfriend in the same class. At first we only hugged and
kissed but gradually we wanted to know more, and finally I found myself
pregnant,'' 15-year-old Nguyen Thi Ly (not her real name) said at the
delivery room of the Tu Du Obstetrics Hospital here in this southern
Vietnamese city.
Ly was one of 80 pregnant young women who went to Tu Du this year, a
figure that health officials here find quite high.
''It was a real shock for my parents (when they found out I was
pregnant). They always think of me as a child and have never accepted that
I have grown up,'' added Ly.
But she did go on to have a baby, unlike others who opt for abortions,
of which there are about 1 million per year - 30 percent of them by on
unmarried females, according to reports from the 'Vietnam Investment
Review'. Between 25 to 30 percent of pregnancies in Vietnam occur among
women under the age of 18.
The trend of pregnancies and abortions is a symptom of teenagers'
ignorance of sexual matters, says experts.
''Sexual health care among adolescents today is not a cause for great
optimism,'' said Pham Song, chairman of the Vietnam Family Planning
Association.
Health experts estimate that in capital Hanoi, 15 percent of teenagers
aged 15 to 19 have experienced sex before marriage. In Ho Chi Minh City the
rate is 2.5 percent. More surprisingly, of those teenagers who are sexually
active, only 36.8 percent have a grasp of basic contraception methods.
During the National Conference on Adolescent Sexual Health Education in
Hanoi last month, delegates revealed that adolescents today are having sex
nearly a year earlier than they did during the 1970s.
''We are curious about sex but we don't have anybody to discuss it
with,'' confessed Ly. Like other teenagers, Ly would have preferred to have
older, more experienced people to talk to, but did not know how to reach
out to them.
She said that sex education is part of the secondary school curriculum,
but her teachers rarely touches on matters dealing with sexual
relationships, birth control, condoms, abortion, and sexually transmitted
diseases (STDs) - topics that teenagers are curious about and need
information on.
Sex education was first introduced as part of the curriculum on
population and family planning subjects in the 1980s. However, the subject
was heavily slanted toward demography rather than reproductive health, and
was only offered to students 15 to 18 years of age.
''Because many teachers still find it uneasy to speak about sex with
school students, sex education has yet to be allotted separate subject
status,'' said Professor Dang Quoc Bao, deputy head of the Population and
Family Planning Education Department at the Ministry of Education and
Training (MoET).
As a result, ''(sex education) still falls beneath the joint mantles of
morality, geography and biology,'' he said.
''Our teacher talked about sex in a very dry way, and many of the boys
used it as a way to tease the girls. Most people in class don't really
understand it,'' said Mai Thi Tuyet, a secondary school student in Thai
Binh province.
Thai Binh and Quang Ninh are two northern provinces that were surveyed
by the Sociology Institute of Vietnam from 2000 to 2001 about the impact of
sex education.
Researchers found that sex education in local schools is still
inadequate. Many teachers lack the proper communication skills to field
questions about teenage sex in a classroom situation.
The survey found that students aged between 17 and 19 have only the
vaguest notions about how to prevent pregnancy, avoid STDs and HIV/AIDS.
According to the Joint U.N. Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) this year,
the HIV prevalence rate in Vietnam for people aged between 15 to 49 is 0.3
percent, way below 1.8 percent for Thailand or 2.7 for Cambodia.
The HIV prevalence rate in Vietnamese aged between 15 to 24 is 0.13 to
0.20 for females and 0.25 to 0.38 for males, official figures say.
Key to addressing HIV, STDs and teenage pregnancy is the right
information, but many teachers lack training on this and often feel lost.
They end up resorting to safer ground by discussing sex solely in terms of
population and family planning.
Many Vietnamese parents too say sex education is inappropriate. ''Nobody
taught me about sex when I was sixteen, still I did have a healthy and
happy family,'' said Nguyen Van Tam, a 56-year-old father.
Still, MoET officials are putting their faith behind sex education
programmes first introduced during the 2000-2001 schoolyear that place a
strong emphasis on openly discussing sexual health matters with students.
''We need to talk to students about sex and safe sex rather than arguing
about whether they should or should not be having sex,'' argued Nguyen
Minh, a secondary school teacher here.
Minh says that it is time sex education is approached in a way that
satisfies teenagers' information needs, which often requires audiovisual
material to stimulate group discussion and questions.
''Only in a relaxed environment can students have the opportunity of
understanding their sexual needs and behave accordingly,'' Minh said.
The young Ly could not agree more. ''If only I had been supplied with
more information and concrete advice,'' she rued.
(END/2002)
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