Due to the reluctance shown by most parents and teachers to discuss physical and emotional aspects of puberty with children pushes them to seek information from unreliable sources, exposing them to exploitation, a baseline study conducted by ‘Lifeline’ revealed on Saturday.
Addressing a press conference, LifeLine Chief Executive Omer Aftab said that there was a severe vacuum of information in the 100 million plus Pakistani youth.
“To date, no serious, concerted efforts have been made to sensitise them on their basic rights. Without proper guidance, the lives of our youth are scarred for life. The LSBE course, which is a major initiative, is being taught mostly in urban and semi-urban areas. This too ignores 62 percent of the population,” he said.
Aftab said that the objective of the study was to gauge and assess the level of understanding of different key stakeholders about adolescent and youth sexual and reproductive health right (SRHR) issues.
The data was collected from 9 districts of Pakistan, including Islamabad, Lahore, Lodhran, Karachi, Jamshoro, Peshawar, Abbottabad, Quetta and Pishin.
Around 62 percent girls and 67 percent boys in Islamabad had heard about their reproductive health rights, as compared to only 39 percent girls and 50 percent boys in Lahore and 53 percent girls and 48 percent boys in Karachi.
Knowledge about contraceptives, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), emotional aspects of growing up and gender based violence was low. These findings were also the part of the baseline study conducted by Lifeline.
Omer Aftab also dispelled false impressions which had nothing to do with religion but were centuries old rites and customs of this region.
“Our religion does not forbid us from discussing or imparting proper guidance to children on these sensitive issues,” he said
“The issue should not be labelled as a socially proscribed topic and parents especially, in the middle and lower middle classes, should discuss these issues with their children,” he added.
Puberty introduces hyperactivity of hormones that result into emotional ups and downs as a result of which they may face multi-faceted adjustment problems in the society.
The most interesting result of the study is that 85.3 percent girls, 94.6 percent boys and 99 percent of all politicians, teachers, journalists and religious leaders endorse the idea of teaching SRH in schools.
