I am grateful to the Leas-Ceann Comhairle for the opportunity to raise this important issue once again in the House. Given the UNFPA state of the world population 2003 report launched in Dublin yesterday and the alarming rise in sexually transmitted diseases, as reported by the National Disease Surveillance Centre, all elements of the health sector must redouble their efforts to communicate an effective safe sex message.
Brendan O'Brien of the UNFPA described the report as a serious wake up call. He said that it is a wake up call to society to listen to young people and acknowledge their needs so they can lead healthy, productive and dignified lives. The report stresses that education, information and sexual health services are urgently needed in all regions of the world. It also highlights the fact that studies repeatedly show that empowering young people with quality information about relationships and sexual health is a key component in strategies to delay the onset of the first sexual experience. The more educated and more aware young people are, the less likely they are to have unprotected sex at an early age. Education brings with it the confidence to make more mature decisions.
In developing programmes for young people on issues of sexual health, we must engage with them so they are accessible and appropriate to their particular needs. While in global terms, Ireland's teen pregnancy rates are low, they are the second highest in the EU. Our rate of teen pregnancy is twice that of Sweden and three times that of the Netherlands.
The ‘sex is wrong' approach, which has dominated our thinking for so many years, is out of touch with the needs and behaviour of young people and has consequently met with little success. Recent surveys on attitude and behaviour of young people and the rising sexually transmitted disease, STD, rates bear testament to this failure. What needs to be done to improve things? We need to ensure that responses to outbreaks are timely and that the statistics on STDs are up to date – the figures released this week relate to last year.
Treatment for STDs is inexpensive and usually comprises a course of antibiotics. Early primary care intervention is far less expensive than if problems are left untreated resulting in higher infection rates and more complex health problems for those who are infected. If left untreated chlamydia can lead to infertility.
Prevention is paramount in any strategy to deal with STDs. Awareness about the risks associated with casual unprotected sex and the use of condoms in sexual relations is essential. The price of condoms and their lack of availability in some parts of the country is a disincentive to their use. In raising the importance of condom use in STD prevention, there has been a small but persistent lobby which asserts that condoms promote disease. This destructive message should be faced down. If people are having sex – they clearly are – a condom, if used properly, provides the best available protection against STDs.
While the Crisis Pregnancy Agency has been established to help reduce the instance of crisis pregnancy and there are individual sexual health strategies within health boards, there is still a need for more comprehensive direction at national level. There is enormous disparity between the services available in different health board areas. No testing facilities for STDs is available in the North-Eastern Health Board area.
The UNFPA report cites some excellent examples of the success which followed when sex education and services were made accessible to young people. We need to be open to the experiences of the Netherlands where the issue of teenage pregnancy has been successfully dealt with and there is an effective sexual health policy. Key elements in their strategy include convenient access to contraceptive services for sexually active young people and treating sex education as an integrated part of the school curriculum, which includes biological and emotional aspects of sexual development, facilitating informed decisions and providing people with the confidence to say no if this is what they want. This only comes from an atmosphere where openness flourishes. Let us look forward to a new openness in this area.
