(First of two parts)

CATBALOGAN, Samar—It’s Sunday night live in Catbalogan.

A crescent moon hangs low over the town, and residents are taking advantage of the balmy breeze that capped a day of oppressive heat and blinding sun.

In crowded Imelda Park right across the provincial capitol, mothers push strollers with toddlers munching rice crispies and boiled bananas. Courting couples snuggle in anonymity, protected by thick shrubbery, outside the orbit of a solitary fluorescent lamp.

Past their dinner time, the boys and girls of Kartada Samar (KS) are hard at work, convincing Catbalogan’s young citizens to listen to what they have to say.

It’s not an easy job—a night out with the gang or one’s sweetheart before the humdrum of jobs or schoolwork take over on Monday would be a more beguiling prospect. But the KS guys and gals are relentless.

After several minutes of friendly persuasion, three small groups materialize and spread out to separate corners, and the KS speakers, who are all in their teens, roll out their agenda before their equally youthful audience: a discussion on reproductive health issues in relation to the youth, focusing on the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and HIV/AIDS (human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome).

Purposeful banter

What the audience thought would be a session of prissy lectures and finger-wagging, complete with boring statistics and ho-hum advisories, ends on a high note, with a lot of easy banter, an exchange of high fives and “horsing around with a purpose,” as one KS member would put it.

Tomorrow would be another busy day for the KS members belonging to Samar (also known as Western Samar) province’s Sangguniang Kabataan (SK), or youth council, most of whom are college students. Their activities are monitored like a hawk by former KS members who have moved on to become Young Adult Stakeholders as mentors of the new batch.

Kartada Samar is an offshoot of Kartada Tres, a pilot project initiated in 2004 by SK officials of Lanao del Norte and Misamis Oriental, in partnership with Population Services Pilipinas Inc. (PSPI), a nongovernment organization providing accessible sexual and reproductive health (ASRH) services, with special emphasis on adolescent sexual health and the prevention of STDs and HIV/AIDS in this age group.

A recent United Nations report warned about the rising number of HIV cases among young adults in the Philippines. It said the figures have increased three-fold, from 41 in 2007 to 110 in 2008, in the 15 to 24 age group.

Most vulnerable

SK officials are the frontliners in Kartada Samar activities, with the participation of local government units tapped for much-needed support.

The project was conceived to spur interest in adolescent sexuality issues among young adults since they are the most vulnerable and uninformed (or misinformed) sector as far as unsafe or unprotected sex is concerned.

Kartada Tres (acronym for Karapatan at Kalusugan ng Kabataan) was a huge success in Lanao del Norte and Misamis Oriental, judging from the encouraging feedback from local government officials who passed resolutions allocating a budget for the advocacy campaign.

Sexuality surveys

Growing attention to the need for an enlightened approach to reproductive health issues involving the young was highlighted in a series of nationwide surveys on sexuality and reproductive health conducted among young Filipinos in the country’s 16 regions.

The series, entitled Young Adult Fertility and Sexualty Study, (YAFSS) was undertaken by a group headed by Dr. Corazon Raymundo and including Peter Xenos, Grace Cruz and Lita Domingo at the University of the Philippines Population Institute. The series of surveys started in 1982 involving female respondents only. It was followed by another study of male and female adolescents in 1994 (YAFS2).

The last survey of the series done in 2002 (YAFS3), and using 20,000 respondents of both sexes from ages 15 to 27, revealed that more and more young people had engaged in premarital sex that, in most cases, “were unplanned and unprotected” and with more than one partner.

Based on the study, demographers found that 49 percent of the males and 11 percent of the females surveyed had multiple sex partners. About 79 percent of those who had experienced their first sexual encounter admitted that they had not used contraceptives, and continued not to take any precautions in succeeding encounters.

Raymundo also noted that the numbers in same-sex encounters rose. In the 1994 report, she said, only 10 percent of male respondents admitted they were attracted to the same sex.

Eight years later, the survey showed 52.6 percent of the male respondents made up the bulk of homosexual contact among young people, with the rest (47.4 percent) being female.

Consequences

These encounters most probably took place with both parties unprotected, said Raymundo.

“Sex is risky when the participants are not physiologically and psychologically prepared for the consequences,” she told a university forum in 2003.

“This is the basis of adult society’s concern about adolescent sex because the risks are magnified in this group.”

The consequences were chilling, with a young population increasingly exposed to early marriages (and separations), risky or frequent pregnancies and sometimes, abortions, and the danger of catching sexually transmitted diseases or HIV/AIDS.

A State of Philippine Population Report released in 2003 showed that 10 percent of Filipino women become mothers at the age of 18, accounting for 30 percent of births, 6 percent of spontaneous abortions and 3 out of 4 maternal deaths.

Against this backdrop, Kartada Samar was launched in 2006.

SK officials were the ideal frontliners as they were seen as role models because of their work in the Sangguniang Bayan (municipal councils) as representatives of the youth sector in governance.

Young people are seen as effective conduits for KS activities because, as the studies showed, the youth seldom, if ever, discuss matters concerning sex and other reproductive health issues with their parents, much less with religious leaders.

Instead, they turn to their barkada (gang mates) for advice that is often wanting, and the information unreliable.

Alarm bells

The findings of the YASF3 report did not only show a considerable increase in the number of young people engaging in premarital sex (23 percent or 2 out 10 youths in 2002, compared to 18 percent in 1994), it also pointed out that the figures were higher in the National Capital Region and Eastern Visayas. That meant 4 out of 10 young adults had engaged in premarital sex, with little or no knowledge of the consequences.

With Eastern Visayas (Biliran, Eastern Samar, Leyte, Northern Samar, Samar or Western Samar and Southern Leyte provinces) only one notch behind the National Capital Region in the prevalence of teen premarital sex, alarm bells sounded among local executives as well as health officers about the threat of STDs and HIV/AIDS to their young population.

Together with the Bicol region, Samar and Leyte also had a high fertility rate compared to other provinces in the Central Visayas area. (To be continued)