i Report Issue No. 3 2005 - Philippine Center for Investigative ...
i Report Issue No. 3 2005 - Philippine Center for Investigative ...
i Report Issue No. 3 2005 - Philippine Center for Investigative ...
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FOCUS ON FILIPINO YOUTH<br />
CHERYL CHAN<br />
Generation Perils of<br />
Sex<br />
UP A FLIGHT OF<br />
stairs, in a<br />
room with red, yellow, purple,<br />
and green walls, the talk is all<br />
about sex, all of the time. This<br />
is, after all, the hotline center of<br />
the Teen Foundation <strong>for</strong> Adolescent<br />
Development (FAD), an organization<br />
dedicated to adoles-<br />
cent health. In this room, among<br />
a few potted plants, counselors<br />
are always ready to answer calls<br />
from youths and discuss with<br />
them the consequences of premarital<br />
or unprotected sex.<br />
In the past, typical hotline<br />
questions involved girl-boy relationships<br />
and family, school, and<br />
peer issues. But in the last year<br />
alone, the number of inquiries<br />
about sexually transmitted infections<br />
(STI) has soared. It now<br />
ranks third among the top five<br />
most commonly asked issues.<br />
“It’s very alarming,” says<br />
Cecilia Villa, president of FAD,<br />
which has its offices right smack<br />
in the heart of Manila’s university<br />
belt. Awareness is higher<br />
now, she explains, but very<br />
few people realize they can be<br />
infected with a disease because<br />
of one mistaken assumption or<br />
a momentary lapse of judgment.<br />
With the invincibility characteristic<br />
of the young, they “know<br />
about it but don’t think it can<br />
happen to them.”<br />
Dr. Rosendo Roque, head of<br />
adolescent health of the <strong>Philippine</strong><br />
Obstetrical and Gynecological<br />
Society (POGS), is himself<br />
quite worried. There is a lack of<br />
statistics and woeful underreporting,<br />
but based on feedback<br />
from obstetricians and gynecologists<br />
across the country and<br />
from his private practice, Roque<br />
believes STIs among youth is a<br />
growing health concern.<br />
STIs are infections of the<br />
reproductive system, transmitted<br />
through sexual contact generally<br />
through warm, moist mucous<br />
membranes such as the vagina,<br />
anus, urethra, and the mouth.<br />
“STI” is used interchangeably<br />
with the more common term<br />
“STD” or sexually transmitted<br />
disease. Some organizations,<br />
including the Department of<br />
Health (DOH) and the World<br />
Health Organization, are now<br />
using the more politically correct<br />
STI. The most common<br />
STIs diagnosed are gonorrhea,<br />
known in the vernacular as tulo,<br />
chlamydia, trichomoniasis, genital<br />
herpes, and genital warts.<br />
There are many factors behind<br />
the increase of STIs, says<br />
Dr. Teresita Brion, an ob-gyn at<br />
St. Luke’s Hospital in Quezon<br />
City. “There’s the media.<br />
There’s the barkada. There’s<br />
the breakdown of families. You<br />
don’t need hormones surging<br />
to want to experiment.”<br />
There is certainly no lack of<br />
stimuli either. Today’s youth are<br />
exposed to sex and sexuality<br />
earlier and in larger doses. There<br />
may still be the constant nagging<br />
of elders about sex being a sin,<br />
but between advertisements us-<br />
ing sex to sell products, double<br />
entendres on noontime variety<br />
shows, and pirated pornographic<br />
DVDs sold <strong>for</strong> less than P80 in<br />
Quiapo to gyrating MTV starlets<br />
and explicit lyrics of hip-hop<br />
songs, young people are constantly<br />
bombarded with messages<br />
about sex. These contribute<br />
to a shift in cultural values that<br />
makes casual sex more permissible<br />
and traditional preconditions<br />
<strong>for</strong> sex such as marriage or true<br />
love increasingly irrelevant.<br />
As a result, Filipino youths<br />
are having sex earlier. Last year,<br />
Roque’s youngest patient was all<br />
of 14. This year he has a 12-yearold.<br />
Brion sees patients who are<br />
sexually active even be<strong>for</strong>e their<br />
first menstrual cycle. According<br />
to the 2002 Young Adult Fertility<br />
and Sexuality (YAFS) survey of<br />
the University of the <strong>Philippine</strong>s<br />
Population Institute, the average<br />
age <strong>for</strong> the first sexual encounter<br />
<strong>for</strong> both men and women is 18.<br />
About 55 percent of these first<br />
sexual experiences were not<br />
planned or were something the<br />
teenagers did not want to happen<br />
at that time.<br />
Premarital sex is also<br />
becoming more accepted,<br />
its prevalence rising from 18<br />
percent in 1994 to 23 percent in<br />
2002. But the sex is often unplanned,<br />
sporadic, or a product<br />
of either being nadala (carried<br />
away) or peer pressure. It often<br />
takes place be<strong>for</strong>e teens learn<br />
about STIs and other health<br />
risks. “They still don’t know<br />
what is going on in them,”<br />
says Roque. “Most of them are<br />
getting into it because of peer<br />
pressure or experimentation.<br />
They are not well-guided.”<br />
He also cites the impact<br />
of broken families, absentee<br />
parents, and lack of role<br />
models created by the mass<br />
exodus of Filipinos overseas.<br />
Parents abroad shower their<br />
children with gifts in order to<br />
compensate <strong>for</strong> their absence,<br />
so the children grow up in an<br />
environment of material excess<br />
without proper guidance.<br />
In today’s sexually charged<br />
landscape, there is a surfeit of<br />
teenagers left on their own to<br />
figure out their own values.<br />
Dr. Brion suspects that<br />
experimentation on bisexuality<br />
and homosexuality, as well as<br />
one-night stands and having<br />
sex “<strong>for</strong> old times’ sake” or<br />
“just because” have become increasingly<br />
common. And while<br />
the dominant practice is still to<br />
have a single partner, there is a<br />
trend toward multiple partners,<br />
especially among young men.<br />
YAFS data show that about 50<br />
percent of men have had multiple<br />
sex partners compared to<br />
about 11 percent of women.<br />
THE CALLERS of FAD’s phonea-friend<br />
hotline are a good mix<br />
of students and young professionals.<br />
Most are male. One<br />
possible reason is because males<br />
are more likely to have multiple<br />
partners and are there<strong>for</strong>e more<br />
vulnerable to contracting an STI.<br />
At the same time, some STIs<br />
tend to be asymptomatic among<br />
women. Only 20 percent of<br />
women, <strong>for</strong> example, exhibit<br />
symptoms of gonorrhea; just half<br />
show symptoms of trichomoniasis,<br />
which is marked by painful,<br />
burning urination and a yellowgreen<br />
discharge among females.<br />
The rest are thus unaware of the<br />
ticking time bomb in their bodies<br />
until it is too late, or when<br />
too many complications have<br />
already set in.<br />
STIs become a serious<br />
public health concern when<br />
ignored: in women, gonorrhea<br />
can lead to pelvic inflammatory<br />
disease, which increases<br />
the risk of infertility and ectopic<br />
pregnancy. Chlamydia, left<br />
untreated, can spread to the<br />
upper reproductive tract and<br />
in women, infect the uterus,<br />
fallopian tubes and ovaries,<br />
44 PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM I REPORT