HEALTH TIPS
Challenges confronting contraception
- Published: 13/10/2009 at 12:00 AM
- Newspaper section: Outlook
To improve awareness of contraception and to enable young people to make informed decisions on sexual and reproductive health, September 26 is designated "World Contraception Day".
Participating in the commendable global mission, "World Contraception Day 2009" in Bangkok was organised by a coalition of the Asia-Pacific Council on Contraception (APCOC), the Ministry of Public Health's Department of Health, Chulalongkorn University's College of Public Health Science and Bayer Schering Pharma, under the title of "Your Life, Your Voice: Talk Contraception", to promote informed sexual values among young people and to advance better understanding of contraception. Students from 12 institutions were invited to attend.
Findings from "Teen Sexual Intercourse and Contraception", a survey recently conducted by Taylor Nelson Sofres, were among the interesting and useful information presented to the workshop attendees. The study collected data relating to the sexual perceptions of 3,230 teenagers aged between 15 and 24 years in 15 countries from July to August 2009. Some of the alarming indicators unveiling the sexual health situation of today's young generation are shown below.
- Most European teenagers had sexual intercourse for the first time at the average age of 16, while teens in the US and Asia Pacific did so at 17.
- On average, about 31 percent of the respondents did not have proper knowledge of contraception at the time of their first sexual engagement and that number reached a whopping 40 percent in countries like Turkey, China, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand.
- About 20 percent of the teens surveyed had had sex with a new partner without any protection or contraception, with 31 percent saying they had not prepared the contraception materials in advance, 12 percent forgot, 12 percent did not like the available protection/contraception methods, another 12 percent saying their partners preferred not to practise protection/contraception, and 11 percent replied that they had been under the influence of alcohol.
- A lot of teenagers had serious misperceptions of self-protection and contraception. As many as 36 percent relied on external ejaculation, which is only 70 percent effective.
- By having sex during menstruation, when the endometrium is tender, 14 percent of those surveyed risked getting an endometrium infection, which could have led to other, more serious internal infections.
- On misconceptions of alternative contraceptive choices, 7 percent of Thai teens believed in taking a shower after sex, 3 percent opted for sex during a shower, 2 percent said cleaning the vagina with soda worked, and 1 percent went for putting the legs up and lowering the head after sex for two hours.
- Interestingly, the teens in the 15 countries, while believing that proper sex and birth control education should be obtained from doctors or their mother, turned instead to their sex partners and friends when they needed to consult someone on the subject because of shame.
- A high wake-up figure of 32 percent admitted to being aware of unwanted pregnancies among friends and family.
Learn more about this global campaign and the application of proper contraception at http://www.your-life.com.
