March 12  every year, is Youth Day, and apart from it being a holiday,  most people will be indifferent to that day.
Most of what you and I may recall of the day is that,  we did not have to go to work.
We did not have to wake up early and suffer the slog of traffic all the way to work.
Or that for once we escaped the dread of meeting the boss in the corridor, when we were late and having to make up another lie for our tardiness.
Some arguments may arise as the memory fades, if that was the day the President failed to finish his speech or was it on Women’s day.
This is often how little the impacts of these many National, International or Christian holidays make.
The days come and go leaving no significant difference in the way we live, except perhaps the opportunity to visit long forgotten relatives recently bereaved.
Some arguments arise about who the youth are and what age group does this represent.
I will leave these arguments to those who are more expert in this than I am. For our purposes,  I will accept the older definition of   youth as representing those people above 17 and less than 35 years.
This is the largest demographic group in Zambia, and makes up over 60 percent of the total Zambian population. Stated like that it makes one to sit up and take notice.
So what are the major issues with this age group?
I am sure you will say youth unemployment, and perhaps you would be right.
From my perspective however, the bigger issue is how we can keep this group safe from disease.
You will ask the question, why this should be important.
Well if the youth are heathy then the future of the country is secure and guaranteed.
It sounds a little hollow, I know.
Like a statement, politicians make when seeking re-election, from a naïve electorate.
Think of it this way though.
You are working hard to create a good future for yourself, but you are working even harder to make certain that your children have a better life than you did.
Replace the word youth, with “my children” then perhaps you will have caught the thinking better. So rephrasing, I would say the biggest issue with “our children” is not will they have jobs.
The biggest question will they survive “youth hood” so that they will be healthy enough to work at all.
The biggest challenge of all is the undisputed fact that diseases are eating away at our greatest heritage, our grand children.
It is a fact that all over Africa, Zambia included,  there has been a remarkable decline in our children’s ability to have children.
The biggest reason for this is the risk paused by Sexual Transmitted Infections.
Notwithstanding our general indifference, of which I am as guilty as any of us, it may be a good opportunity to ask what can we do about it? We can begin by sounding an alarm and bringing some attention to these health problems.
1.What are the main health risks of the youth “our children”?
2. What dangers do these risks bring?
3. How can these risks be reduced?
1. What are the main health risks of the youth?
I was asked once to do a workshop with young people from the urban and periurban areas of Lusaka.
The idea was to see what they know about health and what they do about it.
I learnt an important lesson,  young people are more interested in each other than in anything else.
They were more excited about being brought together and it was hard to keep them focused on the topic.
The Urban youth knew more than the periurban youth, but they both behaved the same.
The greatest health risks for the young people today are HIV and STIs.
These diseases are fueled by   early premarital sex, alcohol abuse, drug abuse and smoking.
It also leads to high rate of teenage pregnancies and very young single mothers.
These risks are no different from the risks all young people face in all generations.
Why is this so, you   might ask.
Well putting it very basically, this is the time of development of their reproductive system and they will have a very strong reproductive drive.
This risk is more serious now because of the added  problem of  HIV infection.
The highest prevalence of HIV in Zambia is among the youth.
New HIV infections are highest among the youth.
The HIV prevalence among the youth is between 20-28 per cent, about twice the national average prevalence.
What is HIV and what are STIs?
These subjects have been dealt with so frequently, that we are all probably suffering from “information fatigue” about them.
So I’ll spare you much of the detail and give a little bit of a different rendering, hoping I’ll hold your attention.
A distinction is often made between reproductive health and sexual health.
When there was talk of privatising ZESCO in the early 2000s, we heard about unbundling. Which meant that the functions of ZESCO could be divided into three, which were, I learnt, generation, transmission and distribution(or delivery).
These functions could be seen as different and sold separately.
Keeping the concept of unbundling, we can then say  reproductive organs, are those that deal with generation and transmission, while sexual organs deal with distribution or delivery.
You might ask the question, if you are cheeky, delivery of what?
Well just as ZESCO delivers electrical units, so these systems delivery reproduction units (example, the egg or the sperm).
Given this understanding we can say STIs (Sexually Transmitted Infections) are those diseases which are spread only or mainly by sexual means. HIV on the other hand is a disease spread mainly by sexual means, but also by blood transfusion or from a mother to her newborn baby.
The disease is caused by a small germ called a virus, which enters the defence system of the body(immune system).
Cleverly it destroys the body’s defense system, rendering the body open to any germs that wish to attack the body. How common are STIs in Zambia.
The National AIDS council indicates the STI prevalence in Zambia to be at eight to 10per cent.
The STIs attack the distribution or delivery organs or more simply the sexual organs.
They cause three main problems initially, these are sores(ulcers),leakage(discharge) and swellings(lymph node enlargement).
HIV on the other hand causes two main problems which are  infections  by “opportunistic infections” low grade germs(particularly TB) and cancers of the reproductive system(in particular Cancer of the neck of the womb-cervix).In men cancer of the manhood(Cancer of the penis).
2. What dangers do these risks bring?
Many social problems will result from these health risks faced by the youth.
However the most devastating of these is the damage to the reproductive system.
The countries of Africa in general and Zambia in particular are faced with the little recognised problem of male and female infertility. What is infertility you might well ask?
The World Health Organisation defines it at the failure to have children inspite of consistent regular sexual intimacy in a couple over a period of at least 1 year.
The whole region of sub-Saharan Africa is termed the infertility belt, because of the decline of fertility rates among the youth.
In Zambia over the last few years the ability of women to have children has declined from eight  per woman in the 1960s to only 5.3 children per woman in the 2014.
The Zambian population growth rate has fallen from 3.1per cent  in 1980 to 2.3 per cent  in 2013.
It is also interesting to note that fertility rates are lowest in the Copperbelt and Lusaka provinces, where HIV prevalence and STIs are highest.
For the record contraception usage  rates are also low at about 49percent . Put very bluntly,  these disease are depriving us of our grand  children.
You need only look at the newspaper column to see evidence of this.
The largest increase in advertising has been among  traditional healers claiming to be able to cure problems around having children.
This has spilled out in the streets, and in many towns up and down the country you will find many women selling portions with presumed remedies for infertility.
There is nothing that makes parents happier than being surrounded by bouncy grand children in their old age. You and I are at risk of losing our posterity.
How do STIs cause infertility? We had spoken earlier about ZESCO, and the generation, transmission and distribution of electrical units.
The germs that causes STIs  produces a disruption in all three activities.
They will damage the reproductive organs (the ovaries and the testis) which produce(generation part) the reproductive units(eggs or sperms), they will also clog up the tubes (fallopian-female tubes and vas deferens-male tubes) which transmit them and also the sexual organ(which distribute them, so to speak).
However the most frequent culprits are the tubes(fallopian and the vas deferens) which usually closes off, resulting in none transmission of the reproductive units to allow for fusion of the egg and sperm(fertilisation).
The result of this blockage is the failure to have children.
Unfortunately these disease do not only stop at causing our children to become infertile, they travel through the reproductive and sexual organs causing   other diseases.
The most fatal of which is cancer.  How do these disease do this?
The combination of low defence cells in the body and an increases in viruses (small germs- the Human Papilloma Virus) that damages the reproductive body cells lead to cancers.
These viruses enter the nucleus (the cells central control unit), here they interfere with the encoding system (DNA) which controls and regulates cell growth and development.
This leads to a loss of control of cell growth.
This in turn leads to cancer. Cancers as is well known is a condition in which normal control of growth of the cells is lost.
Abnormally growing cells overgrow their boundaries and invade and destroy neighbouring cells.
In particular the common cancers are Cancer of the neck of the  Womb(Cancer of the Cervix) and Cancer of Male Organ(Cancer of the Penis).
3. How can these risks be reduced?
There are a few social vices that promote or fuel STIs and HIV infection among the youth. A number of studies have shown an increase in teenage smoking and drinking among the youth.
Particularly starting in the lower secondary school classes of grade 8 and 9. So our responsibility as parents is to educate our children about these risks while they are still in primary school.
This responsibility must rest with the parent.
The school, the church and grandparents cannot be used as a surrogate parents.
The schools and the church can only support and reinforce what we are already doing in the home. We must get our children involved in youth church groups that promote good moral behaviour.
This can only be successful if we show this example ourselves in our homes. It has also been shown that children who delay their first sexual contact are less likely to be at risk for HIV and STIs.
Girls are more at risk than boys.
The longer we are able to keep our children in school the more we can delay their first sexual contact.
We must off course be the first role models for our children, the more stable our own marriage life is the more likely we will be to have a positive influence on our children.
How often do we discuss matters of health with our children?
The measure of the volume of this discussion we have in the home will determine the risk that we place on our children.
None else can do it for us, not the school, not the grandparents and not the church.
We must ourselves rise above our own taboos and discuss these matters for the sake of our offspring. For all our male children, we must encourage them to be circumcised.
This will reduce the risk of STIs and HIV and also preserve the health of our future daughters in Law. Male Circumcision not only reduces the risk of STIs and HIV, but also cancers such as Cervical Cancers and Cancer of the Penis.