The National Assembly's Committee for Culture, Education, Youth and Children Affairs (NACEYCA) August 27 said at a meeting on reproductive and sexual health of teenager regulations that young people’s awareness of gender, safe sex and birth control is very low.
The participants released the figure that only 27 percent of teenagers are practicing safe sex in the first sexual intercourse. Children are still victims of sexual assaults with over 1,000 cases per year.
Nguyen Van Tuyet, deputy chairman of NACEYCA, said that teenagers who are from ten to 30 years old make up nearly 40 percent of the country’s population.
In recent years, the birth control demand among young people remains high. There are a few medical clinics which provide consultation and birth control services for teenagers however, most private clinics are no under control by local authorities.
The delegates agreed to add sexual and reproductive healthcare into law. Young people should have right to access information of gender education and living skills in schools, on the other hand, medical clinics should be improved.
There should have a national sexual and reproductive healthcare strategy to mobilize organizations and investors to build more clinics, aiming to supply sexual information to young people, help them protecting their health as well as HIV/ADIDS prevention, said delegates.
The Ministry of Health should provide more sexual and reproductive healthcare services to unmarried young persons and workers in the industrial parks and immigrant people.
Tran Thi Ngoc Bich, who heads the Health Strategy and Policy Institute pointed out the Ministry of Education and Training should separate the sex and reproductive health chapter instead of including in Living Skill chapter.
According to the Ministry of Health, the rate of HIV/AIDS infection through sex in the country was 33 percent, 39 percent, 41 percent, 43 percent and 45 percent from 2009 to 2013 respectively. The rate of abortion among teenagers in the country was 2.2 percent, 2.4 percent and 2.3 percent in 2010, 2011 and 2012 respectively.
