SOMEONE recently said that everybody has got sexual feelings but not every feeling should lead to pregnancy or contracting a Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI).
Unfortunately, this state of affairs continues to haunt Zambia’s youths, especially adolescent girls who face many barriers to contraceptives and end up being forced into pregnancy.
According to the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), more than 85 million women and girls are forced into pregnancy every year because they are denied of contraceptive care.
IPPF explains that providing one year of contraceptive care would cost a Government about US$25 for each woman.
However, denying contraceptive care will force women and girls into pregnancies they have not planned.
“That leads to ill health and poverty and for 300,000 of them, it also means death. It is the world’s poorest women who are most likely to be forced into pregnancy. They can’t say “I Decide,” the family planning organisation said.
From the above, it is evident that there is need to change this state of affairs and support universal access to contraception.
As the IPPF rightly explains, the evidence is clear that family planning saves lives.
There is need to address the problem of lack of contraception among the poorest and most marginalised women and girls.
Barriers to contraception and the right to decide among women include lack of access to education and the right to make choices about one’s own body.
It is sad that women and girls in Zambia and world over continue to be denied rights to very basic choices such as how many children to have and when, whether to stay in school or not as they do not have access to modern contraceptive methods.
As the “She Decides Conference” once discussed, “If we want the world to advance, we must ensure women’s rights to decide.”
It is necessary to note that there is need to protect women’s rights and tackle inequality, sexual and reproductive health and rights which are key to individual wellbeing.
There is need for parents to get involved to effectively address the issue of Sexual reproductive health among adolescents.
This is because the primary reason why adolescents do not use birth control or protection is because they are afraid their parents will find out.
Other barriers to family planning among the youths even in Zambia are that Contraception is also associated with promiscuity and straying.
Fear of side effects and adverse reactions were also a major barrier to use according to the research.
The biggest fear was that a particular method would cause infertility and many of these fears were based on myths and misconceptions.
Young women learn about both true side effects and myths from their social networks.
Another key barrier is lack of physical and financial access to family planning commodities because health facilities offering family planning were not equitably distributed throughout the country.
Many women spoken to complained of frequent stock-outs and the associated costs of lost wages, transport and other financial challenges.
Shame is also a significant factor preventing use of family planning (specifically condoms), particularly for unmarried youth.
Young people perceive women who carry condoms as promiscuous, and that asking a partner to use condoms would reveal them as sexually wayward or untrustworthy.
Young people also noted that while married people may freely ask for family planning, they are inhibited because of the shame associated with procuring contraceptives.
At service level, many providers and available health information indicate that family planning are only for those who are “mothers”, and are not suitable for those who have not yet had a child Another cited barrier to family planning use is the association of modern contraceptives with birth defects or abnormalities.
“Pills are very bad and I do not like them because if you take the pill for so long, you may give birth to a paralysed child or even develop cancer,” one user said.
Failure to menstruate regularly, a common side effect from using certain contraceptive methods, was interpreted as causing the body to retain ‘dirty blood’ and leading to stomach aches.
Condoms were associated with discomfort and irritation from the lubricant, which they feared may cause an infection.
Methods such as the coil or implant that were inserted were seen as having the potential to harm one’s internal organs.
In Zambia, identical twin sisters Martha and Mariah Zulu who teach and train their fellow youths on issues of sexual reproductive health bemoaned the low levels of sexual reproductive health knowledge among the youths in Zambia.
The twins are part of the volunteers at the Planned Parenthood Association of Zambia (PPAZ) where they interact with youths from universities, colleges, secondary schools and even school dropouts.
In an interview, the two said it was a pity that many youths were still not aware of how to use contraceptives and were sometimes afraid of consulting older people.
The twins said there was need to bust myths surrounding issues of sexual reproductive health among the youths.
They cited the issue of contraceptives like Jadel, which many youths were afraid of using because they feared they could break inside their arms.
The youths were also afraid of taking contraceptive pills for fear that they would make them fat.
Other fears were around the morning after pill where the general reasoning among the youths was that one tablet out of the two prescribed ones, was enough to prevent a pregnancy.
Another concern was on the female condom which the youths felt was too big for them and needed to be worn eight hours before intimacy to make it reach room temperature.
The youths also felt that the female condom was complex to use and hard to find.
“What we established is that 90 per cent of females we have interacted with would rather use a male condom. Even among distributed condoms, the female condom is rarely found,” they said.
Some youths complained that the male condom was too tight and prevented them from being more intimate with their partners.
The male youths also complained of continuous harassment from shop owners each time they tried to buy condoms.
“Some of the youths may be aged 16 and the shop owners harass them and stop them from buying condoms by threatening to report them to their parents because they were too young to engage in sexual activities. The truth is that many youths out there are sexually active and something needs to be done to ensure that they are safe,” the twins said.
Despite all these issues, preventing unintended pregnancy and disease is essential to improving adolescents’ sexual and reproductive health and their social and economic well-being.
Becoming pregnant during adolescence can greatly alter young women’s life prospects and those of their children.
Moreover, adolescent childbearing is associated with lower educational attainment, and it can perpetuate a cycle of poverty from one generation to the next.
Thus, helping young women avoid unintended pregnancies can have far-reaching benefits for them, their children and societies as a whole.
Delaying childbearing requires focusing on its major underlying factors and these are timing of first sex and marriage and effective contraceptive use along with the social, cultural and economic environment surrounding these behaviors, notably girls’ education and gender inequality.
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