The Observer (Kampala)
Richard M. Kavuma
6 March 2008
A report to be launched in Kampala today shows that most Ugandans start sex before the age of 18, while many girls use condoms to guard against pregnancy and not to avoid infections like HIV/AIDS.
As a result, the report says, there is need to make sex education and such things as condoms more available to young people. The report, titled Protecting the next generation in Uganda: New evidence on adolescent sexual and reproductive health needs, is based on two national surveys conducted between 2004 and 2006, involving more than 16,000 males and females aged 12-49. Published by the Guttmacher Institute and distributed by Panos Eastern Africa, it is part of a larger project also conducted in Burkina Faso, Malawi and Ghana. Among the authors are Ugandans; Richard Kibombo, Stella Neema and Kalundi Serumaga.
"It is important to acknowledge that adolescence is a time when most people become sexually active and that meeting the needs of young people is integral to an effective national [HIV/AIDS] prevention campaign," the report says.
According to the survey, teenagers, especially girls, start having sex a lot earlier than most reproductive health programmes presuppose. For instance, among women aged 20-24, twenty percent said they had started sex before the age 15; but only 10 percent of boys in the same group had had sex before 15.
When the bar was raised, 64-four percent of women said they had started sex by age 18; fifty percent of the males had started sex by that age.
This is interesting in a country with strong Christian beliefs and where political leaders have passionately preached abstinence until marriage. Indeed the report says that most Ugandans aged 12-19 strongly believe in avoiding sex until they are married. But the reality is different.
"When asked about the reason for their first sexual intercourse, half of the women aged 15-19 and about eight in ten of the same-aged men who had had sex said they 'just felt like it'," the report says. "Thus simple, straight forward desire motivates sexual initiation."
While condoms have been hailed as a key part of Uganda's fight against HIV/AIDS (together with abstinence and faithfulness), the survey found that 41% of the women had used a condom to prevent pregnancy and not necessarily as a barrier against disease. While an equal percentage used condoms to prevent both disease and conception, this finding reflects changing attitudes about HIV/AIDS. Experts have lately warned that Ugandans have become more complacent about AIDS, especially with improved management of the condition.
Among its recommendations, the report urges more educational opportunities, especially for girls. This comes after finding that girls in school, urban women and women of a wealthier class were more likely to have less-risky sexual behaviour than their rural, uneducated or poorer counterparts.
It also calls for more sex education for adolescents, regular condom supply as well as an efficient youth-friendly health care system. This is important in a country where a 16-year-old demanding condoms from a middle-aged or elderly drug dispenser is likely to be sneered at as being of loose morals. Yet with or without the services, the report says, young people are having sex.
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