I nearly jumped out of my skin when I went to use one of the hospital bathrooms while on duty and as I opened the door, a voice screamed out ‘Cant someone have some peace here?’
I summoned the courage to open the door wider and found a young lady sprawled on the toilet floor obviously too drunk to realise she was in a public toilet and not in her own bedroom.
Poor thing!
With the help of security, she was escorted to her own house.
Research show that our young people continue to drink alcohol excesively.
Alcohol excess blurs the lines between responsible behaviour and what is not responsible behaviour. Many young people engage in reckless and risky sexual behaviour under the influence of alcohol.One of the major fall-out of this is the rise in the incidence of unplanned pregnancies and teenage pregnancies.
Unplanned and teenage pregnancies can result in disruption to social, mental and academic wellbeing of young people. Sexually transmitted infections (STI) like Chlamydia and HIV are also possible consequences of risky sexual behaviour.
All sexually active young children should be encouraged to delay sexual intercourse until they are much older and in committed relationships. But if this advise falls on deaf ears, it is important that contraception is available for young people to use.
Barrier type contraceptions like condoms used carefully can prevent transmission of STIs and also prevent pregnancy.
Contraceptions that need to be remembered such as condoms, daily pills or weekly patches can easily be ommited in the heat of passion. As a result, I strongly advocate the use of reversible long acting contraceptions such as the implants or coils for young people.
My book ‘Understanding contraception’ was written to explain the concept of contraception in a way any young person above the age of 14 years can understand.
You can get it by clicking here for your young people as an eBook or to get the hard copy, click here. They will find the illustrations and jokes very engaging while learning about the different contraceptions and how they work.
I believe that equiping our young children with information does not make them promiscuous but rather protects them from easily avoidable mistakes.
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Adaeze
