Sexed stymied as school  pregnancies soar

As teen pregnancies in Panama continue at over 10,000 moves to introduce sex-education in schools remain stymied, largely due to opposition from religious groups.

Comprehensive sexuality education guides, in the works, since 2016 are still in the “final review” stage by the National Directorate of Curriculum and Technology of the Ministry of Education (Meduca) says, as Luz María Córdoba, Director of Psychoeducational Services.

However, they must also be validated by all the player involved in the matter, including the Psychoeducational Services, the Inter-institutional Commission for the Development of the Strategy on Education in Sexuality, organized civil society, teachers, and parents, among others.

The guides, which were prepared by a Panamanian consulting company, are aimed at elementary, middle and high school students, but there is still no precise date for their implementation since they also need to train staff in the use of this didactic tool, Cordoba told La Prensa.

The history of this document began in September 2016, when an inter-institutional commission was formed, led by The Ministry of Education (Meduca) and involving by seven other entities, which worked on the selection of information on reproductive and sexual health, to create a “pedagogical instrument” that attends to the particularities of each school-age group..

After over a year of the work, the commission delivered the data last year to the consultant, to prepare the final document.

With the new guidelines, the MinistryMeduca completely discarded the guides prepared in 2015 in conjunction with the United Nations Population Fund, at a cost of $25,000.

The sexuality guides, discussed in June 2016, were based on five thematic axes: sexuality; rights and citizenship; sexuality and gender; interpersonal relations and communication, and development of sexuality and sexual and reproductive health, including the prevention of teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases.

Rejection 
The guides were immediately rejected by several sectors.

Juan Francisco de la Guardia, member of the Panamanian Alliance for Life and Family, said that there is a good disposition by the Ministry for the guides to be consensual, and for that reason, they have been allowed to make suggestions

He said that when the entire process of revision and correction is completed, the country may have complete sexuality guidelines.

Rubiela Sánchez, of the Panamanian Coalition for Integral Education in Sexuality, said assured that they have not been consulted on the subject.

She said that the guidelines should have been implemented since 2016, but the lack of political will led to their failure to materialize.

For Sanchez, these guides are necessary because they will become a pedagogical tool so that children and adolescents are able to identify any proposal loaded with abuse, any request for friendship in social networks of a pedophile, and insurance with sex education will postpone the start of sexual relations.

She said aspects such as pregnancies in young people are a pending debt of the government because in recent years the numbers of pregnancies among girls from 10 to 19 years of age are dramatically increasing.

At least 10.000 girls thousand women between 10 and 19 years old enter the facilities of the Ministry of Health (Minsa) every year for prenatal care, representing a figure that represents 30% of the total number of pregnancies reported annually in the country and does not include those who gave birth in CSS  or private hospitals.

In  2018 there were 10,440  pregnancies of girls and adolescents under control, that is, 528 more cases than in 2017

When adding the pregnancies of girls and adolescents between 10 to 19 years old from 2014 and up to last year, the number of cases amounts to 53,361, according to Minsa.