The New Nation - Internet Edition

Chittagong Correspondent

Speakers at a seminar on 'Adolescent Reproductive Health' underscored the need for basic health education and friendly relations of the parents and children for easy handling of different health hazards.

They also said that time had come to change traditional attitude to the younger family members and help them aware of their reproductive health.

Calling the age between 10 and 19 as the 'transition and vulnerable', the speakers suggested parents and senior family members to be accessible to the younger so that the adolescents are duly heard.

"Unless the adolescents are duly informed about the probable health hazards and their possible remedies they may get frustrated and derailed," they added.

The Press Institute of Bangladesh (PIB) hosted the seminar for journalists at the auditorium of Chittagong Zila Parishad.

Commissioner of Chittagong Division Hossain Jamil addressed the first session of the seminar as chief guest while Director General of the PIB Mohammed Nazrul Islam presided over it.

Director of Chittagong Divisional Health services Dr. Mohammed Rezaul Karim Chowdhury and Additional Deputy Commissioner (General) Mohammed Mofazzel Hossain addressed the seminar as the special guests while Manager (Advocacy) of Merie Stops Avik Rahman and Director General of Family Planning Dr. Mohammed Ashraf Ali presented keynote paper.

Hossain Jamil said that there was no alternative to be aware of the reproductive health for averting mishaps like unsafe sex, unplanned and early pregnancy, traumatic syndrome what often pushes to immorality.

He called upon the news workers to help enhance awareness about the issue by repeated write-ups.

Avik Rahman said, "Nearly 1.7 million adolescents across the country suffer death simply because of accident, violence, illness and reproductive complications a year."

They said 78 of every 100 girls got married before 18 years of and nearly 60 of them turn mothers before they reach 19.

A strategy is now under process where all adolescents will be provided adequate reproductive health counseling in the socially comfortable and legally supportive environment by 2015.