Yesterday the Malta Medical Students’ Association (MMSA), with the endorsement of Doctors for Life and Doctors for Choice, released a statement whereby they criticised the Maltese education system for its lack of complete sexual education.
Each year the Standing Committee on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights including HIV/AIDS (SCORA) within MMSA has held peer education sessions about sex, relationships, contraception and sexually trasmitted diseases in many different schools around the island. It has noted that many secondary and sixth form students often have little knowledge of sex, contraception and sexually transmitted diseases. This is in line with several recent studies which revealed that over half of sexually active Maltese youths do not use contraception and in line with the high rate of Maltese teenage pregnancy.
MMSA-SCORA called on the government to move from an abstinence-based sexual education to a mandatory comprehensive sexual education reform which protects the Maltese youth from the undesirable consequences of sex. It also noted that those who received such a type of education were less likely to report teenage pregnancy.
Besides ensuring that adolescents are receiving factual information about their sexual health, MMSA-SCORA also proposed the training of educators in order to ensure the standard of these teachings are maintained and not compromised through the educators’ personal beliefs. Training should also be provided to parents and caregivers who might also not be informed enough.
The full statement can be found here.
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