Social taboo, shyness keep Bangladesh’s adolescents away from health corners: Population Council

A study indicates that adolescent boys and girls feel discouraged to go to the designated corners in hospitals for seeking sexual and reproductive health advice due to “social taboo and shyness”.

The government has established those special corners in some Maternal and Child Welfare Centre, MCWC, and Union Health and Family Welfare Centre, UHFWC, to extend sexual and reproductive health services particularly to unmarried adolescents.

Those have been set up after researchers found that adolescents in Bangladesh have very limited or no access to sexual and reproductive health-related information and services, and face serious barriers to getting information and guidance regarding those issues.

Open discussion about sexual and reproductive health remains a cultural taboo for adolescents and young people, particularly among unmarried adolescents.

Most parents express discomfort discussing those health and rights issues with their adolescent children. School teachers are also reluctant to discuss them.

On the contrary, a large number of adolescents are sexually active because many of them are married, especially girls. Marriage rate before the age of 18 is 59 percent, according to the latest Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey.

Considering those facts, the government has set up those centres to provide them appropriate knowledge, information and services.

But now the study released on Wednesday at a dissemination event in Dhaka indicated that social taboo and shyness discourage adolescents and their families from seeking treatment from the adolescent-friendly health corners at government facilities.

A 17-year-old girl told the researchers: “I have heard that if any adolescent girl comes to take service at those centres, people of the community think she is pregnant or has come for any complicated problem. Even if the service providers go to houses, people ask about the reasons."

People think those are ‘family planning clinics’.

The research also finds shortages of medicine and lack of privacy for adolescents are one of the major challenges that should be resolved to make those centres functional.

Many adolescent girls demand separate waiting rooms for adolescents inside the facility compound to protect privacy.

The study recommended for more publicity at the local and national level and generating awareness about the importance of those special corners in the community.

The study also emphasised on collaboration between different departments of health and education ministries, and also between government and NGOs to make the AFHC intervention successful and effective.

The study focused on 10 such corners supported by UNFPA in five districts -- Moulvibazar, Thakurgaon, Sirajganj, Patuakhali, and Cox’s Bazar -- and data were collected from August to October in 2016.

The research, however, showed that those who come to the special corners were “satisfied” with the services.