Building Life Skill through Reproductive Health Literacy

Reduces Vulnerability to HIV/AIDS

Anirudha Alam

Reproductive health literacy has a sustainable preventive impact to promote a healthy

lifestyle as well as responsible behavior. It is among the most powerful tools for reducing
adolescents’ vulnerability to HIV/AIDS through providing necessary knowledge,
stimulating positive attitudes and bringing about life skills. Life skill engendered from
reproductive health literacy mobilizes efforts targeting to lessen high risk behavior.

Best practices may be adopted undoubtedly through peer education resulting in positive
attitude within positive environment. An effective reproductive health literacy approach
is multi-sectoral and integrated to address all factors that increase vulnerability as for
HIV/AIDS. Vulnerable sexual behavior nourished by ill believes, discrimination, drug
and alcohol abuse, peer pressure and so on deprives people to enhance ability to prevent
STIs. Ensuring to attain life skill, reproductive health literacy fosters analytical thinking
and healthy habits. Adolescents having qualitative reproductive health literacy are very
much responsible to gather adequate knowledge and potential expertise to curb infection
of HIV/AIDS.

Adolescents need skills necessarily to practice safe behavior through reproductive health
literacy with a view to creating self-esteem extensively to foil undesired peer and adult
pressure. Thus they may have such core life skills as negotiation, ability of working
together, self-awareness, decision-making, critical thinking, bargaining and diversity of
creativity through gender session, orientation, training, courtyard meeting for exchanging
views and experiences.

Adolescent girls are very much vulnerable suffering from discrimination and depriving of
rights due to their social and cultural values and ill believes. Consequently they are
mostly drop-out from formal education and made resort to risky behavior. Lack of access
to HIV/AIDS information and prevention services provokes them to practice unsafe
sexual behavior.

Adolescents, especially the girls, have to have exclusive opportunity to be aware of

HIV/AIDS through preventive education that they are able to maintain their future
partner’s reproductive and sexual health. Parents often feel embarrassed and hesitate to
discuss with their adolescents to teach them about STIs frankly due to their strong
religious believes, superstition practices and moral resistance.

Qualitative reproductive health literacy integrating preventive education to promote life

skill ensures the social empowerment of adolescents. Academic curriculum should be
designed and conducted to stimulate the creativity of adolescent girls through the holistic
approach of income generating activities (IGA) internalizing gender awareness. Thus the
impact of qualitative reproductive health literacy will sustain comprehensively making
them socially empowered. After a certain period completing their secondary education,
they will be able to influence their community as a persuasive pressure group to be aware
of HIV/AIDS. In the name of women empowerment, this kind of life skill has a far-
reaching and promising development output.

Adolescents have the consecutive acceptance and access to the respective community
people. They may organize community based organizations (CBOs) in order to raise
awareness. In the course of ongoing community mobilization through CBOs, adolescents
will be able efficiently to set the community people thinking about HIV/AIDS
prevention. Eventually the knowledge on HIV/AIDS can spread quickly and effectively
as per desired outcome. Leaving a long lasting mark upon the community people, thus
community based HIV/AIDS prevention program will be expanded by way of advocacy
and behavioral change communication (BCC) on a great scale. In this aspect, the
adolescents have to be trained up to conduct intensive interpersonal communication (IPC)
that they may present information on HIV/AIDS prevention in a brief, dramatic and
memorable fashion.

It is the utmost important to realize the potential that the academic curriculum has to
fulfill the right of adolescents to reproductive health literacy as for attaining life skill.
Then the aftermath makes them committed to the campaign of HIV/AIDS prevention
seriously.

Anirudha Alam
Deputy Director (Information & Development Communication) & Trainer
BEES (Bangladesh Extension Education Services)
183, Lane 2, Eastern Road, New DOHS
Mohakhali, Dhaka 1206
Bangladesh.
Website: http://anirudhaalam.onsugar.com/
Phone: 01718342876, 9889732, 9889733 (office), 8050514 (res.)
E-mail: anirudhaalam@yahoo.com

Ref: UNESCO, World Bank