NOTABLY, India has many wonders--evil wonders in malnutrition, poverty, illiteracy, health, education etc, what not ,everythings ! Politicians and Planning Commission are playing cruel jokes with poverty and poor in India.Instead identifying poverty and poor, who , in my opinion, constitute over 73 percent in India, by an independent and constitutional commission on the patters of the Election Commission of India (ECI) , the union government is, sadly, banking on the data provided on poverty and poor by the so called economists and the Planning Commission, which have been misleading not only the union government but public also.
In this essay, I want to conststrate, one of the biggest 'wonder evil 'about women and their death from an unsafe abortion in the country and to some extend global scenario on this score. This essay has been based on the report of World Population Day, concluded recently. Each year 19 million to 20 million women risk their lives, globally, while undergoing unsafe abortions, conducted in unsanitary condition by unqualified practitioners or practitioners, who resort to traditional but rudimentary means. To substantiate the facts Dr Gilda Sedgh of the Guttmacher Institute, a U S sexual-and reproductive-health-and-advocacy centre, believes that " about half of all abortions world-wide are unsafe"--an appalling number when one considers that abortions are simple procedures when done correctly.Today,overcrowded planet of some7.1 billion people marks World Population Day, and with an ever growing number of teenagers giving birth, the United Nations Organisation (UNO) has decided that the focus of this World Population Day will be adolescent pregnancy. Currently, highest concentration of young people is found in India. With an average age of just 29, the country is home to 300 million people below the age of 25. Come 2028, it will also be world's most populous nation. For these reasons, there is need to highlight the state of sexual and reproductive health and rights in India !
In India, the problem of unsafe abortions is especially acute. There were 620,472 reported abortions in 2012; experts say the true number of abortions performed in the country could be as high as seven millions, with two-thirds of them taking place outside authorised health facilities. Not all of these are pregnancies out of wedlock. Many unsafe abortions are performed on married women unable to obtain contraception and unable to travel to a registered clinic, who for economic or personal reasons do not wish to have another child.
Notably ,a woman in India dies every two hours because an abortion goes wrong. That seems like an extraordinary number until one visits the sort of locations where abortions take place--where it can be seen that possibility for some thing to go wrong is high indeed..India's expenditure on health care is only 3.9 percent of its gross domestic products, strangely, putting at par with Gabon or the Central African Republic. Rural government clinics are often nothing more that skeletal brick structures with tin roofs or no roofs and virtually no electricity supply. Women lie on old gurneys or beds if one is available, just so often, they bed down in dark rooms on mud floors scattered with bloody dressings. Less than 20 percent of these centres provide legitimate abortion facilities, compelling many rural women to seek alternative.
Because of demure saris and lashings of the Hindu religion, many have formed an impression of Indians as a sexually modest bunch. Even the country's most famous sexual text, THE KAMSUTRA, comes with singularly unsexy injunctions to self-improvement, portraying sex as means of spiritual enlightenment rather than physical gratification. But the country that has been in the thores of a development boom, social change has been exponential and attitudes to sex have been no exception--particularly among young. Three years ago , Tehelka, an Indian news website that specialises in exposes, found that "age was more than just a number to several young people-it is ticking stopwatch in the race to outdo each other in the bedroom". Reporters conducted interviews across urban India and "met terrifying sexual creatures of all shapes and size" from nine-year-olds who distributed porn in class to teenagers .who had made sex tapes. Unwanted pregnancies are, meanwhile, on the rise, so are Sexually transmitted infections (STIS). A hospital based study done over a five year period and published last year reported a resurgence of syphilis in India and rising number of STIs. The study noted that all the evidence pointed towards a change in sexual practices.According eye -witnesses account teen young , in bold manner, are often found in medicine shops, openly asking for sex -simulating medicines like Viagra instead of contraceptives. Such scenes are variably seen in Patna town areas where the sales of sex simulating medicines demand have risen alarmingly high.
It must be noted that, there are barely any resources for young people curious about sex. Manak Matiyani of MUST BOL, Delhi-based group that works with youth on gender issues, is of the opinion, " sexuality is some thing a lot of young people want to learn about, not only because it is new but also because it is some thing that is talked about." Only 15 percent of men and women between the age of 15 and 24 reported receiving any sex education, according to another study on Indian youths a few years ago. Alarmingly, only 45 percent of young women and 37 percent of young men were aware of the possibility of pregnancy resulting from first intercourse. "Ignorance of sexual-and reproductive-health issues continues even after marriage" said one government report. More than three quarters of young women and 70 percent of young men "did not know what to expect of married life," the study noted.
More over , sex education came into spotlight after Delhi-gang rape incident in December 2012, when the report of a committee k headed by J S Verma pointed to dire need for greater gender-sensitisation among young in India.Due to lack of sex education are plain from the millions of unsafe abortions performed each year to a skewed gender ratio that sees widespread abortion of females fetuses owing to cultural preferences for boys. The 2011 census in India detected that there were 914 females age six and under for every 1000 males. Even after all these social evils, the politicians, teachers and parents continue to oppose sex education, fearing that such programmes would promote promiscuity and undermine social values. The Indian government is dithering over the matters for over 20 years. It's futile attempt to launch sex education programme, the Adolescent Education Programme (AEP, in 1999, could not take off because experts and policymakers continued to deliberate over which topics to include and whether these would offend any prevailing inhibitions in society. And the dilly-dilling attitude of the government continued unabated. A consultant on sexual education says "conservatives found that the course material allegedly featured offensives illustrations and class rooms exercise." The fear was that the programme "would ignite the curiosity of students about experimentation, resulting in teenage pregnancies and promiscuity. By 2007, many largest states of India including Gujarat, Madhjya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Keral , Chhatishgarh and Goa had banned sex education and federal government dropped its support for it as well. A report of the Indian government committee came to the startling conclusion that "there should not be sex education in schools." and that previous attempts at such education had been "quite reprehensible in view of our sociocultural ethos." Indian youths, the committee, decided, needed nothing more than bracing doses of traditional medicines and yoga to cool their ardour.
Experts, however, say there are two possibilities for India. One is establishment of a sex-education programme that 'acknowldges the changing sexual landscape, parents accept that their children must know about safe sex, even if they are unwilling to communicate with their children on the subject and supplies and information are available to young people', says Dr Shireen Jajeeboy of the Population Council of India. The second option is maintaining status quo. Rates of infection will jump and unintended pregnancies will rise, Jajeeboy adds.
Notably, India already has the dubious distinction of being global leader in teenage pregnancy. Around the world, there are some 16 million girls under the age of 18 years giving birth every year. Almost four million of them are in India. Granted, adolescent pregnancies in India are culturally complicated, given the incidence of child marriage and therefore,early child bearing. study found that approximately 1 in 615 to 19-year-olds , "have already given birth or become pregnant, and about half of India's total fertility rate was attributable to those aged 15-24. "nonetheless, early child bearing poses significant b health risks for mother and baby-young teenage bodies are not mature enough to bear children-and maternal mortality rates are high. But facts are facts-Reflecting a trend seen all over urban India, the city of Gurgaon, near Delhi is seeing a marked rise in cases of adolescent girls seeking abortions at government hospitals but then vanishing when asked to return with parents. These are the young women who end up in the back street clinics.
Public health experts promote contraception as protection against unintended pregnancies but it is not easily available in rural areas and where it is available, in the towns and cities, young Indians are either of embarrassed to ask for for it or do not know what to ask for. Because of lack of sex education ignorance is rife. A majority of young Indians do not use use protection during their first sexual encounter.. At the same time as with any country that is developing rapidly, sexual patterns are changing and premartial sexual activity is increasing Globally, women are not getting the contraceptives they need. The number of women with an unmet need for family planning is projected to grow from 900 million three years ago to 962 million by 2015. This increase, researchers, have noted will be driven by most developing countries. studies have shown that 82 percent of unintended pregnancies in developing countries occur among women "who have an unmet need for modern contraceptives." Still there are some glimmers of hopes. a study last year estimated that 272,000 maternal facilities around the world prevented by contraceptive use and that India accounted for nearly a third of averted deaths. But the fact remains that India is home to the most maternal deaths in the world and that 50 percent of those fatalities are in the 19 to 24-year-old age group. With these sorts of numbers, sex education, contraception and greater health -care spending are simply desirable !
SOURCES: THE WHO, THE WORLD POPULATION DAY, UNO ,THE ASIAN TIMES, GOVT OF INDIA HEALTH MINISTRY (Detailed facts on all these websites and their achieves)
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