Adolescents need information on sexual health

Saturday, October 9, 2010 (The Mirror Pg 13)

By Rebecca Kwei
A study on a health intervention on adolescents’ knowledge and sexual behaviour in rural Ghana has indicated that providing sexual and reproductive health information for adolescents is key to a healthy lifestyle.
The study also revealed that little education was not enough to help protect an adolescent, hence adolescents should be encouraged to stay in school up to at least the junior high school level.
Making a presentation at the 10th Annual General Meeting of the Indepth Network in Accra, a health research officer of the Navrongo Health Research Centre, Ms Matilda Aberese Ako, said majority of adolescents and young people lacked relevant knowledge on their sexual and reproductive health (SRH) and that unprotected sexual intercourse placed them at the risk of sexually transmitted diseases and unintended pregnancy.
The study, which was undertaken in the Kassena-Nankana District of Ghana, was a community randomised controlled trial with intervention and non-intervention communities and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.
One arm of the community had health interventions such as peer education activities, school-based teaching of SRH, youth friendly health services and community mobilisation and sensitisation, while the non-intervention communities had only youth friendly health services introduced.
According to Ms Ako, after the study, it was realised that adolescents in communities where the health interventions were introduced had more knowledge on SRH which helped them to make healthy decisions, such as delaying sex and safe sex practices, than those in the non-intervention communities.
For instance, the baseline information on knowledge of signs and symptoms of STDs was 10.6 per cent among females and 6.4 per cent among males in the intervention community, while in the non-intervention communities it was 7.1 per cent for females and 5.1 per cent for males.
However, after the post intervention, knowledge of the signs and symptoms of STDs among females increased to 17.1 per cent and 11.4 per cent in males in the intervention communities, compared to 11.5 per cent in females and 6.2 per cent in males in the non-intervention communities.
She said the study also revealed that Adolescent Sexual Reproductive Health (ASRH) was beyond a health issue and that it encompassed social, cultural and religious dimensions, for which reason there was the need to combine various strategies to reach out to a large audience.
“Providing SRH information for adolescents is a priority area and needs a multi-dimensional approach. All stakeholders must be actively involved in order to give it the needed attention and investment,” Ms Ako added.