Awareness about adolescent reproductive sexual health (ARSH) is less among the rural population as compared to urban and urban slum population in Chandigarh, says a study conducted by the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research.
The ARSH study conducted by the Department of Community Medicine, PGI and it focused on different aspects of health issues faced by the adolescent population in the city beautiful.The Government of India through its National Rural Health Mission, focused on adolescent health from 2005-2011 in Chandigarh and the study was conducted to analyse its implementation during this period and during the course of the study, students of various Government schools were interviewed to collect first hand data.
Dr Madhu Gupta, department of community medicine, PGI said, “Adolescence (10-19 Years) is a vital stage of growth and development. It is a period of transition from childhood to adulthood and is marked by rapid physical, physiological and psychological changes. Ensuring healthy adolescent paves the way for healthy adulthood.”
“This period results in sexual, psychological and behavioural maturation. Adolescents are a diverse group and are in varying situations of risk, status and environments. During adolescence, hormonal changes lead to onset of puberty, sudden and rapid physical growth and development of secondary sexual characteristics,” said Dr Gupta.
Psychological and emotional changes like assertion of self identity and independence, sex drive, and attraction towards the opposite sex take place simultaneously. According to a WHO data around 30 per cent of India’s population is in the age-group 10-24 years. Youth accounts for the 31 per cent of AIDS burden in the country according to NACO.
The ARSH study indicates that the knowledge of contraception was high among school dropouts or students who are out of school residing in urban slums and urban areas. However, the awareness is low among adolescent in rural areas whish is to be improved.On the other hand, the study indicates that due to various Government programmes initiated to spread awareness about HIV, has increased awareness about sexual health, but the knowledge of staying healthy still lags among the adolescent population.
Dr Madhu Gupta, who headed the study said, “It is important to educate the adolescent population about health issues because they are the future of our country. Healthy adolescent will lead to healthy marriage and that in-turn will result into healthy parenthood.”
Another important finding of the study was that adolescent population in Chandigarh were more concerned with curative health, but the global trend was now to focus on preventive health care, to decrease the disease burden. Hence it is important for health care experts to focus more on preventive health care and spread the knowledge of the same among the adolescent population, especially in the rural areas of Chandigarh because it is where the system is lagging.