The crusade to combat teenage pregnancy in Phuket

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The crusade to combat teenage pregnancy in Phuket


Phuket pharmacist Panita Tantivit with the BPWP sexual health book ‘Roo tan why teen’.

PHUKET: -- It’s many parents’ worst nightmare – learning that your teenage daughter is pregnant. Parents are often upset, and at a loss about what to do, with plans for their daughter to attend high school and university suddenly put on hold.

Although abortion is technically legal in Thailand, it is notoriously difficult to find a doctor and hospital willing to perform the procedure, so instead the options then turn to adoption or, perhaps, the parents raising the child while the daughter goes back to school.

Phuket’s teenage pregnancy rates are not the highest in Thailand by any means.

Statistics for the year 2010 list the top provinces for teenage pregnancy as Nakhon Nayok in central Thailand, with a ratio of 109 births per 1,000 girls aged 15-19; followed by Tak (97.2 per 1,000); Rayong (86.5 per 1,000); Chonburi (84.2 per 1,000) and Samut Sakhon (81 per 1,000).

Phuket was well down the list with 67.8 teenage pregnancies per 1,000 girls aged 15-19.

Last year, figures from the Ministry of Social Development show that between January 2012 and January 2013, 913 babies were born in Phuket to teenagers aged from 15 to 19 years old – not a massively high figure, it might be said.

But teenage pregnancies do have an impact on the island. With this information at hand, last year the Business and Professional Womens’ Association Phuket (BPWP), which includes around 80-90 Thai businesswomen, and the National Council of Women of Thailand, applied for funding from the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security (MSD) and published a sexual health booklet for teenagers. Some 23,000 booklets, titled Roo tan why teen (“Know the Teen”) were distributed in Phuket and wider Thailand.

This year, with an additional B144,600 in funding from the MSD, the organisation staged five seminars in Phuket government schools to educate teachers and students about safe sex, working in conjunction with the Phuket Provincial Public Health Office’s health promotion department.

One of the organisers of the sexual health and pregnancy booklet is Phuket pharmacist Panita Tantivit.

Mrs Panita says figures from the MSD show that between January 2012 and January 2013, there were 913 babies born to teenagers.

Mrs Panita argues that many of these pregnancies would be preventable if young women had easy access to the correct information regarding safe sex, so she set about trying to create change.

Born in Bangkok, Mrs Panita has been a pharmacist in Phuket for around 20 years, since graduating from Mahidol University in Bangkok with a degree in pharmacy.

She then earned an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania, where she lived for two years. She now runs the Central Pharmacy, next to Kathu Market, and is also chairs the Health Promotion Department for the BPWP.

For many years she has seen young women coming into her pharmacy asking for the “morning after” pill, women saying they are pregnant, and despondent parents at a loss as to what to do about their young daughter’s pregnancy.

“Parents come in and ask me to help their child who is pregnant. They are upset, they cry and they ask what they should do.

“We advise them to go to the government hospital where there are support services. There, the hospital staff discuss with the parents and child about what to do about the pregnancy.

“The young woman can have the baby, and give it up for adoption, or the parents can take care of the baby. Everything is up to them, it’s their decision.

“In Thailand, parents often won’t talk to their children about these things [sex and sexual health], but the children still want to know. So how do they find out the information? They go to the Internet, or ask their friends, and we don’t know if what they are learning is correct. Maybe it’s incorrect and it might cause them more problems.”

So Ms Panita and her team at the business association were inspired to create a booklet that would act as a guide to young women in Thailand, giving them correct advice about how to avoid pregnancy, HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, and advice on having a positive and healthy attitude to sex.

Inside the 16-page booklet are details on contraceptive measures to avoid pregnancy (such as the contraceptive pill and condoms), acne and changing hormones, HIV prevention and details of sexually transmitted diseases, plus helpful contact numbers.

“The number one reason for Phuket’s teenage pregnancy figures is they don’t know how to protect themselves,” Mrs Panita says.

“We cannot stop them [from having sex]. If you say no, they will say yes, and everything will be vice-versa. Instead, we should tell them that if they want to have sex, they should do it responsibly, and that they will be responsible for the things that happen, such as, maybe, getting pregnant.

“If they get pregnant, what will they do? How do they have safe sex? They should know these things.”

Also important was awareness about the risk of contracting HIV/Aids through unprotected sex.

“Right now, this disease is being contracted by teenagers,” Mrs Panita says.

“Thailand, and Phuket, have the highest prevalence of HIV out of all of the Asean countries. Many people do not use condoms, and I sell many morning-after pills. But women are advised not to use the pills more than twice per month, because then it is not as effective. This pill should be for emergency cases only, it should not be a form of pregnancy prevention.”

Following the organisation’s great success with getting the book published, the women then moved on to sexual health seminars.

Of the five seminars for teachers and school students, three have been held already. The first was in March, attended by 50 teenage students from Wichit Songkram School, followed by 50 teachers from the same school.

On June 15-16, 50 teachers across Satree Phuket School and Phuket Wittayalai School attended a teacher seminar, with teachers being given a workbook and taught how to teach sexual education correctly.

These seminars have been met with great success, says Mrs Panita, and feedback had been excellent.

“One student said they didn’t know about what we were teaching them, and they said it was very useful to them. If we help just one student, I’m happy, because this is life knowledge – they can use it for their whole life.”

Basic sex education is already taught in Thai government schools but this programme was developed by the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), a worldwide international non-profit health organisation. Thanks to this new sexual health initiative, the PATH programme is now being taught in Phuket schools.

PATH’s mission is to improve the health of people around the world by advancing technologies, strengthening systems, and encouraging healthy behaviour – a lot of which is related to female health and contraception.

Teaching the Phuket course are two qualified PATH teachers, who have passed an international course at PATH and now have the title “master trainer”.

There is also another project in the pipeline – to teach parents.

“If we want to educate children, we need to go to all the people around them, such as teachers and parents. Parents are very important too,” says Mrs Panita.

“When women are young, their bodies are not suitable for having a baby. It is time for them to go to school, not take care of children.

“They should be enjoying their teenage years and using that time to study and prepare themselves for being an adult. Girls who become pregnant lose that important time because, instead, they have to take care of the baby.

“The reason I started these projects was because I thought if I didn’t do anything about this problem, then nothing would happen to improve it. So I think that everyone should help together.”

EDUCATION IS KEY

One person who is faced often with pregnant teenagers is Doctor Chanchai Chakarawet, a gynaecologist and obstetrician with 30 years’ experience, now working in the Phuket Provincial Hospital in Phuket Town.

Dr Chanchai says teenage pregnancies on the island is an issue.

“Since I started work here, the number of teenage pregnancies has increased. The first year, there were 30, but this year, there have already been 20 in the first six months.

“There has been a problem about teenage pregnancy in Thailand for a long time because of limited educational programmes for teenagers. There’s not enough information for them.

“This programme [Roo tan why teen] teaches them sexology in school, and I think that’s a great idea and a good project. A lot of Thai parents don’t talk to their children about sex, so the teacher is very important. I think it would be good for our country if the teenage pregnancy rate was lower. And that requires education.”

The youngest pregnant patient he has seen was just 12 years old.

“Often they come here with their mother, and they decide the girl’s mother will look after the baby. After the delivery, the girl will go back to school and go on studying, and her mother will look after the baby. Adoption doesn’t happen much – the common situation is for the family to help care for the baby.

“Some of the parents are upset, some are okay. In some situations the boy will marry the girl. But really, education is the best way. Girls should be taught in schools, when they are about 11 or 12. Thai schools offer very basic sex education, and some teachers are too shy to teach [even that], so this programme is good.”

‘DON’T BE SHY’

Over on Koh Sirae, Jeeranun Jiemjaroen, the head of the Phuket Shelter for Children and Families, is also all too familiar with teenage pregnancies.

Just last month Mrs Jeeranun had a girl aged 12 come to the shelter, after the girls’ mother refused to deal with the problem.

“This girl was looked after by her grandparents since she was young, so she had never bonded with her mother. She was living with her aunt in Pitsanuloke province, and was raped by a friend of the aunt.

“She was still young and didn’t know what to do, or where to go when she got pregnant. Her mother brought her to Phuket but she was unable to care for her, so she brought her to us.

“When she came to us she was five months pregnant. At first she was very sad and quiet, but we really tried to get her doing activities at the shelter to bring her out of her shell. Later on, she felt better and enjoyed living with us.

“She felt connected with our shelter and the staff who work here. She stayed here until she gave birth, and her uncle took her back to stay with him in Bangkok.

“She was the youngest pregnant girl we have seen at the shelter, but we often get pregnant teenagers. However we are just a temporary home for them – people can only stay with us for three months.”

Mrs Jeeranun praised the Roo tan why teen sexual health programme, and said sex education was a key point in preventing teenage pregnancies.

“This is an issue of great concern in Phuket, along with drugs. Society has changed a lot and often it is the girls chasing after boys these days [rather than the other way round].

“Parents have to teach their children, especially teaching their daughters to respect themselves and their bodies. But many parents don’t have the time to teach. Phuket is an urban place – people go to work, and they don’t have time.

“I think this programme is very important. And people shouldn’t think talking about sex is embarrassing. We have to teach children how it is.”

– Claire Connell and Naraporn Tuarob

Source: http://www.thephuketnews.com/the-crusade-to-combat-teenage-pregnancy-in-phuket-40889.php


-- Phuket News 2013-07-18

[andreandre]

Amazing thailand..its 2013 and they are only just figuring all this out

I remember the release of the same sort of ''info'' and similar stats in NZ in the 1960's...

[Sydebolle]

I dont get it.

hy is this so worrisome as every Khun Mae pushes her daughter into producing off springs; preferably with a non-Thai hubby as latter usually does not disappear in Nakhon Nowhere within months of the pregnancy and keeps paying the bills.

Pathetic subject; regretfully again related to the education from home as well as school; latter under the professional eye of no less than the fourth minister in this 22-months government.

[phetpeter]

The campaign should be education, If the schools ain't willing, to give the full facts, then government should set up roving teams to visit schools and at least give a full day of all the information on how,what, why and preventive methods to all students from M3 up to M6. They really need to know everything.

Edited July 18, 2013 by phetpeter

[hansnl]

Well, let's be fair.

This is not something that can be blamed on the farang.

And after having had the second child of a Thai disappearing act a farang is needed for taking care of the girl, the children and the family.

I have the feeling that most of the girls know about the pill, condoms and other means of anticonception.

But the boys do not want to use condoms and the girls are afraid that the pill gives them acne and a dark skin.

Edited July 18, 2013 by hansnl

[lee b]

Well, let's be fair.

This is not something that can be blamed on the farang.

And after having had the second child of a Thai disappearing act a farang is needed for taking care of the girl, the children and the family.

I have the feeling that most of the girls know about the pill, condoms and other means of anticonception.

But the boys do not want to use condoms and the girls are afraid that the pill gives them acne and a dark skin.

correct

[attento]

Well, let's be fair.

This is not something that can be blamed on the farang.

And after having had the second child of a Thai disappearing act a farang is needed for taking care of the girl, the children and the family.

I have the feeling that most of the girls know about the pill, condoms and other means of anticonception.

But the boys do not want to use condoms and the girls are afraid that the pill gives them acne and a dark skin.

correct

Doesn't that sound like a good marketing wheeze. , , get some "university" to show that taking the Contraceptive pill also lightens the skin colour

[belg]

they can always do the amercian way: praise abstination

yeah, that works

informing the kids and putting some condom machines would be nice

but i now my old lady... educated (uni) but when it comes about telling the kids about birds and bees, she get kinda .....

[AnotherOneAmerican]

Factual error in OP.

Girl who has had a baby can no longer attend or return to government high school.

Edited July 19, 2013 by AnotherOneAmerican

[eezergood]

This is more madness & simply a face making exercise! I have been to Uni in the USA look how clever I am! Free condoms & proper education to the morons in school! Not hocus pocus jungle magic to fix all!

This might as well take the UTBNB method!

[stoffel45]

Of course, there is the Takkie Solution!

For a Fee the girl's age is increased to show she is 20!