REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH

Reproductive health is more than just reproductive organs and reproduction. It is how social, mental and sexual behaviors and relationships affect health and ill-health. According to World Health Organization (WHO), good reproductive health therefore implies that people are able to have a satisfying sex life and that they have the capability to reproduce and the freedom to decide if, when, and how to do so. Implicit in this last condition is the right of youth to have access to information concerning their reproductive health and the right access to appropriate health care services for their medical and reproductive health needs.

Too often reproductive health has been considered as relevant only to childbearing women of reproductive years (15-44). It is true that women bear by far the greatest burden of reproductive problems and that biological, social, cultural, and economic factors increase a woman’s vulnerability to reproductive ill-health. But reproductive health has to be understood within the context of relationships between men and women, communities and societies, since sexual and reproductive behaviors are governed by complex biological, cultural and psychosocial factors.

With this world full of whims and caprices and even intricacies as a result of liberalization and globalization, adolescents often bombarded with challenges which directly and indirectly affect their decision making. Juvenile delinquencies, teenage pregnancies and early marriages, which are social stigma, are some of the problems faced by adolescents today. There are reasons that trigger youth risk taking behaviors such as socioeconomic changes as results of urbanization and modernization, improved health and nutrition status resulting at low age in menarche, earlier sexual maturity, low level of knowledge concerning reproduction and control over sexuality and ignorance about sex and family planning.

Within the realm of school, the ever-increasing number of students who engage in drug addiction, smoking, early marriages and early pregnancies as results of pre-marital sex, and other risk taking behaviors reflect ignorance and lack of sense of direction of students. These conditions consequently give unfavorable effects on student’s performance in school and influence his/her ways of behaving and relating to others and coping with life’s pressures and demands. The decisions they will made now will determine their future, thus, it is of great importance that they will have sound mind and body to have sound decisions. Adolescents are vulnerable to violence and poor health unless they will be properly equipped with appropriate knowledge, information and health services to empower them to adopt responsible attitudes and make sensible decisions about themselves and to prompt them to become responsible persons. They need too programmers to prepare them for the future reproductive responsibility and to function effectively as adults (e.g., future parents, teachers, business leaders, civic servants, policy makers and others).