“Learning reproductive health has nothing to do with wrong sexual practices; on the contrary, learning it protects against risks of wrong sexual behaviours,” Dr. Nahla Abdel Tawab, Country Director of Population Council-Egypt.
The culture of silence prevalent in the Egyptian society on reproductive health in youths may have cast a heavy shadow on the degree of their knowledge relating to reproductive health and protection from disease, she said during a conference” Enhancing Partnership to improve Reproductive Health of Youth in Egypt”, on Tuesday.
Through the limited studies that address the reproductive health of the youth, it is clear that they lack information in this regard.
The Survey of Young People in 2014, carried out by the Population Council in collaboration with the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS) that included about 10,000 young men and women, agesd 13-35 indicated that about half of the females were surprised when they first experienced menstruation.
The same survey indicated that nearly half of the males and females never heard of sexually transmitted diseases, and about one fifth of the sample only know how HIV is transmitted.
On the other hand, 61% of young men and women in the survey said female circumcision is necessary; this percentage was higher among females than males, at 64.6% compared to 57.8% respectively.
As for family planning methods, the survey results revealed that more than half of all respondents know about family planning methods and this percentage is higher among females than males, at 71.5% and 52% respectively.
Abdel Tawab demanded the introduction of reproductive health education to curriculums and that it could be studied in a scientific manner in a wider sense that includes pregnancy, birth, family planning, raising children, sexually transmitted diseases, gender equality, female genital mutilation, and early marriage. She stressed the need to not limit reproductive health to sexual conducts.
Giving attention to reproductive health education reduces the increasing divorce rates, representative of the National Population Council, affiliated to the Ministry of Health, Ahmed Hany said.
Representative of the Ministry of Health, Atef El Shetany warned against increasing rates of maternal mortality as a result of the risks of early marriage, pregnancy, and childbirth.
Coordination and foreign conventions director at the National Population Council Fatema Gamil presented the youth aspect of the national strategy for reproductive health and tackled the most important goals that the strategy is working to achieve.
Youths in the age group of 10-29 represent 40% of the total population of Egypt, about 34 million people, more than the combined population of Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, and the UAE.
