Removing "barriers" in adolescent reproductive health care

According to a survey at the Provincial Center for Reproductive Health Care, the number of abortion cases of mothers under 15 years old from 2000-2005 at the Center accounted for 1.36% of the total number of cases coming to terminate pregnancy. This rate is much higher in private obstetrics and gynecology clinics. Pregnancy while still in adolescence leads to unwanted births or abortions causing great mental damage, many girls suffer from depression, and even permanently lose the ability to be mothers.

Working for many years at the Provincial Center for Reproductive Health Care, Head of the Department of Reproductive Health Care for Adolescents, Specialist Doctor 1 Hoang Thi Thu has counseled hundreds of mothers under 18 years old. There was a case of a 13-year-old girl in Yen Thanh who came to the Center to ask for an abortion when she was 12 weeks pregnant. The person who "sponsored" her was her homeroom teacher. It was the teacher who discovered the "unusual signs" of the student.

Another girl, who was a good student at HTK School (Vinh City), was brought to the Center by her mother. After learning that her daughter was 25 weeks pregnant and the doctors advised her not to abort but to let her give birth, the mother was shocked and fainted right in the clinic. Later, the girl had to take a leave of absence from school to...become a mother.

At a private gynecological clinic in Vinh City

According to Dr. Thu, many children come here to "take care of" themselves for the second or third time. Many children are still wearing their school uniforms and innocently answer the doctor's questions about where they study, how old they are, who they have had sex with for how long.

Master, Doctor Pham Vinh Hung - Deputy Head of the Department of Functional Exploration of the Provincial General Hospital) said: Every day, the department receives ultrasounds of many pregnant women who are "not yet full, not yet worried". In fact, abortion cases in this area will go to other areas or to private medical facilities to resolve them "discreetly", especially with young pregnancies (under 7 weeks), private obstetrics clinics can handle them. Moreover, there is now a method of medical abortion (by taking pills). Many women have arbitrarily sought this method to resolve the consequences, and pharmacies sell it freely, even giving instructions.

The fact that young people buy abortion pills at private medical facilities and whisper to each other about their "experiences" in contraception and abortion all bring about unpredictable consequences. Currently, the most dangerous thing that is at risk of increasing is the complications after young people buy abortion pills at their own discretion. Many young people go to the hospital when they have an unfinished miscarriage or hemorrhage.

According to Dr. Nguyen Ba Tan - Director of the Provincial Center for Reproductive Health Care, when implementing many projects related to reproductive health for adolescents, the biggest obstacle the Center encountered was the uncooperative attitude of parents in particular and adults in general. They did not agree to let their children access reproductive health knowledge and considered it "showing the way for deer to run".

The establishment of VTN clubs in schools, asking for a few classes a month to promote gender and health initially did not meet with the consensus of the teachers in charge. Some teachers even answered frankly: Studying at school is too much for the children and they cannot arrange time for other things. Besides, there is the lack of attention from parents to their children.

It is time for us to look at reality to change the concepts that create "barriers" in reproductive health care for adolescents. For 3 years now, Nghe An has been implementing the Ministry of Health's reproductive health project, including the reproductive health care sub-component for adolescents and young people.

In addition, the project "Ensuring logistics, family planning services and improving nutritional status for children" focuses heavily on communication to raise awareness for adolescents so that they can understand, recognize, prevent and take care of themselves.

In the past 2 years, with a budget of 100 million VND in 2009 and 114 million VND in 2010, the project has trained provincial lecturers for 2 doctors; maintained 4 youth clubs at the Provincial Center for Reproductive Health Care, Le Mao Secondary School, Ha Huy Tap Ward Health Station, Ben Thuy Ward Health Station (all in Vinh City), maintained 2 points providing reproductive health care - family planning services for youth; organized 32 classes (in 2009), 58 classes (in 2010) providing direct counseling on reproductive health for youth with more than 3,000 students participating; organized free reproductive health check-ups for youth at the Center. From these activities, awareness of reproductive health care for children as well as adults has been greatly improved.

Many schools that initially had great difficulty in accepting the issue have gradually changed. In some schools, teachers in charge of management such as Le Mao Secondary School (Vinh City), Hung Thinh Secondary School, Hung Nguyen Secondary School, Provincial Ethnic Minority School... have proactively invited staff and counselors to talk with students after school about gender and reproductive health issues.

Through these club activities and talks, the children have gone from being shy to being extremely open and asking many questions and concerns. From here, we can see that the need to know and understand about reproductive health is very great. Caring for and caring for this age group requires empathy and sharing. Parents, teachers and relatives must be friends so that children can have a correct understanding of reproductive health issues.

PTV