THE National AIDS Council says it will start working towards creating awareness campaigns for early childhood and sexual reproductive health education.
In an interview, NAC board vice chairperson, Reberiah Monde, said there was need for early sexual reproductive health education because this could help educate young people about the dangers that come with engaging in sexual activities at an early age.
Monde said the organisation was concerned about the high number of young girls falling pregnant whilst at school because this put them at a high risk of contracting the HIV virus.
“As NAC, we are concerned about the number of girls that are falling pregnant in our schools. This shows that many of our young people are practicing unprotected sex,” Monde said. “So as NAC, we are working towards the programming of awareness campaigns so that sexual reproductive health education starts from an early age and not in the teenage years.”
Monde said the country’s culture posed a challenge on the education of young girls on issues of sexual reproductive health.
“It starts with our culture because our culture says I cannot talk to my young children about sex. The mother and father cannot talk about sex with their children, so it is coming from our culture. So we are
working on the sensitisation and awareness from the communities through to the schools,” she said.
And Monde said NAC was also planning to conduct a research on why there were rampant cases of pregnancies among the youths in schools.