Reproductive Health Issues and Strategies : In the human community, from birth to old age, every member has to pass through different stages of age. Out of all these stages, adolescence is an important stage in which various types of physical, mental and behavioral reproductive changes take place in the body of teenagers for sexual maturity. As a result, through these changes, the youth develop physical capacity for the responsibility of procreating children and their proper upbringing and to face the challenge of making themselves mentally capable. In such a situation, due to lack of knowledge about reproductive health i.e. all aspects of reproduction, youth have issues related to reproductive health, some of which are as follows :
- Lack of reproductive health awareness among people.
- Pregnancy complications.
- Child birth and unsafe abortion.
- Lack of desired facilities and care at the time of delivery.
- Congenital and acquired infertility.
- Less interval between offspring and more offspring.
- High incidence of sexually transmitted diseases among young men and women.
- Function problems like irregularity and stoppage of menstrual cycle in adolescent girls.
- Hiding sexual diseases.
- Lack of sex education in schools.
- Female foeticide.
- Marriage and reproduction at early age, necessity of pregnancy, abortion etc.
Keeping all these issues in considerations, India was amongst the first countries in the world to initiate action plans and programmes at a national level to attain total reproductive health as a social goal. These programmes called family planning were initiated in 1951 and were periodically assessed over the past decades. Improved programmes covering wider reproduction-related areas are currently in operation under the popular name Reproductive and Child Health Care (RCH) programmes. Creating awareness among people about various reproduction related aspects are the major strategies under these programmes are as follows :
1. With the help of audio-visual and the print-media governmental and non-governmental agencies have taken various steps to create awareness among the people about reproduction-related aspects.
2. Parents, other close relatives, teachers and friends, also have a major role in the dissemination of the above information.
3. Introduction of sex education in schools should also be encouraged to provide right information to the young so as to discourage children from believing in myths and having misconceptions about sex-related aspects.
4. Proper information about reproductive organs, adolescence and related changes, safe and hygienic sexual practices, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), AIDS, etc. would help people, especially those in the adolescent age group to lead a reproductively healthy life.
5. Educating people, especially fertile couples and those in marriageable age group, about available birth control options, care of pregnant mothers, post-natal care of the mother and child, importance of breast feeding, equal opportunities for the male and the female child, etc., would address the importance of bringing up socially conscious healthy families of desired size.
6. Awareness of problems due to uncontrolled population growth, social evils like sex-abuse and sex-related crimes, etc., need to be created to enable people to think and take up necessary steps to prevent them and thereby build up a socially responsible and healthy society.
7. Strong infrastructural facilities, professional expertise and material support. These are essential to provide medical assistance and care to people in reproductionrelated problems like pregnancy, delivery, STDs, abortions, contraception, menstrual problems, infertility, etc.
8. Implementation of better techniques and new strategies from time to time are also required to provide more efficient care and assistance to people.
9. Statutory ban on amniocentesis for sex-determination to legally check inereasing menace of female foeticides, massive child immunisation, etc., are some programmes that merit mention in this connection. In aminocentesis some of the amniotic fluid of the developing foetus is taken to analyse the fetal cells and dissolved substances. This procedure is used to test for the presence of certain genetic disorders such as, down syndrome, haemoplilin, sickle-cell anemia, etc., determine the survivability of the foetus.
10. Better awareness about sex related matters, increased number of medically assisted deliveries and better postnatal care leading to decreased maternal and infant mortality rates, increased number of couples with small families, better detection and cure of STDs and overall increased medical facilities for all sex-related problems, etc. all indicate improved reproductive health of the society