Senior Reporter
jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt
President of the Family Planning Association of T&T (FPATT), Professor Rose-Marie Belle Antoine, is doubling down on calls for a comprehensive sex education programme in schools. Her call follows recent police reports of an increase in teenage pregnancies.
Belle Antoine said sex education is crucial to addressing the public health and human rights issue.
“We really do need that early intervention in our schools and our families including sex education, psycho-social programmes and so on to enable them to get rid of this cycle.
“But it is still a relatively taboo subject, comprehensive sex education, and we are talking about age-appropriate information by the way and what we want to do at Family Planning is build the capacity of our teachers who can then better engage with young people so they can make more responsible decisions.”
Head of the TTPS’ Special Victims Unit, Acting Superintendent Michelle Rowley-Powder said since 2015 the police have received 1660 reports of teenage pregnancies. However, the number of unreported cases may take this total even higher.
Rowley-Powder said the ages of those involved might also contribute to the low conviction rate.
“There are times when both parties, meaning the pregnant child and the other person responsible for the pregnancy, happen to be the same age, or probably one year apart or two years apart, so that sort of age difference decriminalises criminal activity between children of similar age,” she said.
Belle Antoine, who described the statistics as alarming, said: “Children need to receive adequate and appropriate information on sexual health. It has been an uphill battle and it is not just pregnancies because obviously if you have teenage pregnancies it means there are high rates of unprotected sexual activity happening by our children.”
Belle Antoine also expressed concern about reports she got from nurses at the FPATT clinic that sexually transmitted diseases, namely HIV and syphilis, are on the rise.
“We have become pretty complacent about HIV and then you get a jolt and that is one thing about advocacy and human rights for all these social justice issues, you can never let up,” she said.
Contacted for comment, Education Minister Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly stated the ministry’s position on the rollout of sex education in schools remained the same. While Health and Family Life Education is taught in some schools, sex education does not feature in the curriculum.
Belle Antoine said young people must be able to access information about sex education in a timely manner.
“This internet and all this information, we cannot prevent our children from learning about sex so what we need to do is take the lead and ensure they learn about it in a responsible way not just from the street from those who want to prey on them,” she said.