Fred Ezeh
It used to be a discussion for mature minds, and never mentioned in the mid of teenagers. The word “sex” was only allowed to be mentioned in the mid of adults, particularly married couples.
The sexual discussion space has been opened wider, thus allowing teenagers unrestricted access to the knowledge of sex. Unrestricted access to internet has significantly increased the access to sexual content especially among the younger people.
Precautionary measures were recently taken by government when it encouraged sex education classes in schools with real time demonstration to expose students to real truth and knowledge of sex.
Local and international organisations have equally asked parents to engage their teenage children in open and sincere sexual discussions so they could have reliable information about it instead of getting it from wrong people outside the home.
As part of effort to sensitise the youths, a nongovernmental organisation, Pathfinder International, assembled young people, from some tertiary institutions and youth advocacy groups in Abuja, including those with disabilities, to a reproductive health interactive workshop tagged, “Youth Buzz on Female Condoms.”
The workshop focused on the need for young people to acquire updated knowledge on reproductive health, with more emphasis on the use of female condoms for prevention of Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) and unwanted pregnancy.
At first, they were asked to share their experiences on the use of female condoms and other sex related experiences. That, perhaps, gave the organizers access to their level of knowledge on female condoms and how best to approach them for better knowledge about their reproductive health.
Reproductive health programme officer for Pathfinder, Kosi Izundu, said the workshop was designed to provide interactive platform for the participants to freely interact with each other, share knowledge, ideas and experience, and most importantly, get answers to questions.
In addition, participants were expected to get proper education and enlightenment on the subject matter for self benefit and dissemination of same knowledge to others who could not attend the workshop:
“We used to focus on training public health workers in the past. But we recently shifted our attention to younger people because of the need to get them properly educated, prepared and ready for sexual and reproductive life.
“Obviously, over half of the participants have not seen female condom for the first time neither do they know the use. It was difficult at the beginning of the interaction, but they were quick to grabbed the knowledge and were better of.
“In course of our interactions, we realized that few person that know or have used the female condoms complained about its affordability as well as unfriendly comments from people. Our aim was to properly educate and enlighten participants so they could be better of and also share the knowledge with friends.”
Senior Programme Advisor, reproductive health, Sekina Amin-Bello, said they changed approach due to previous experiences with health workers in the hospitals: “We previously concentrated our training on health workers who are supposed to counsel and advice women to use condoms. Unfortunately, much results were not achieved in that regard.