• people’s capability for reproduction, parenthood and a healthy offspring
• a responsible, satisfying and a healthy sexual life
• autonomous decision making about whether to have children, when an how many,
• awareness and availability of safe and effective contraception
• liberty of sexual harassment and compulsion,
• use and availability of adequate health service
Bad reproductive health is often related to a lack of knowledge, illnesses, harassment, exploitation, unwilling pregnancy and even death. Social and physical factors add to the reproductive health or they endanger it.
The right for reproductive health is a part of common human rights and it delivers great advantages to individuals, families and to the entire local society. Therefore, every modern society organizes reproductive health protection, which they use for prevention, diagnostics, treatment, education and advisement.
Reproductive health is a hypothesis of people’s sexuality, disregarding if it leads to reproduction or not.
Reproductive health protection has the goal of having a healthy offspring, but protection of sexual health has the goal of enriching life and personal relations, which are very important for reproductive health.
The period of sexual development in adolescence is related with quick physical and psychological development, appearance and sexual functioning problems, raised interest towards the opposite sex, development of new feelings and desires, beginning of sexual activities, attempting new experiences – but also lack of knowledge and techniques for a healthy selection – so therefore there is a tendency for risky sexual behavior.
Because of premature physical and sexual maturity, longer education and later marriages, most adolescents are sexually active before marriage. Curiosity, lack of knowledge, pressure from persons of the same age, emotional immaturity, with uncommon sexual relations leads young towards risky sexual behavior: premature sexual activity, unintentional sexual contacts, changing sexual partners without the use of protection, which all leads to problems related to reproductive and sexual health.
Reproductive health protection includes:
• education about sexuality and reproduction
• advisement about planning a family and use of contraception
• infertility prevention and treatment
• diagnostics and treatment of diseases of the reproductive system, hormone dysfunctions and malignant diseases
• diagnostics and treatment of sexually spread diseases
• pregnancy interruption with prevention and treatment of the consequences
• prevention of sexual harassment and taking care of the victims
The Ward for reproductive health at the Clinic for children’s diseases Zagreb has conducted a research about knowledge, attitudes and sexual behavior of Zagreb high school pupils aged 15 to 19. The aim was to find the most common risky behaviors of adolescents that can have negative effects on reproductive health and future fertility.
According to the research, 24% of girls and 46% of boys had sexual relations, most of them at the age of 16 and 17. Even 22% of sexually active girls and 44% of boys had more sexual partners, and 22% of sexually active adolescents don’t use any method of contraception whatsoever.
The research results show that sexually active adolescents are exposed to risks of sexually spread diseases and unwilling pregnancy and that they know little about the consequences for their reproductive health and fertility.
The main problems of sexual and reproductive health among adolescents are:
• unwilling pregnancy
• abortion (especially illegal/careless)
• adolescent pregnancies and child births
• contraception
• sexually spread diseases
• HIV/AIDS
• Sexual harassment and exploitation
Lack of knowledge, contraception unavailability, exposure to pressure and sexual harassment is a great risk for girls to get pregnant unwillingly.
The younger the girl is with an unwilling pregnancy, the greater the chances are for her to ask for an abortion.
Giving birth before the age of 19 brings more health and social risks for the mother and child.
Adolescent mothers have more medical complications during pregnancy and delivery.
Adolescent mothers often miss or leave school, they have financial problems and they are unemployed or low paid.
Among children of adolescent mothers more frequent is the occurrence of low birth weight, stillborn and mortality.
Sexually spread diseases are very widespread among young people right because of their risky sexual behavior.
Because of immune and anatomic immaturity of the reproductive organ’s mucous and because of incomplete hormone activity, the infection processes among young people develop faster and they are heavier.
Sexually spread diseases are often undiscovered and untreated, so permanent consequences occur, like infertility among men and women, cervix cancer and other.
Problems that are related to reproductive health in adolescence risk the physical, psychological and social health of adolescents, and they can sometimes cause death. These risks are placed among the most serious health problems and because of their importance and diffusion they also become public health problems.
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