Social media drive on sex education

THE Davao City Health Office (CHO) Population Division will launch stronger social media campaigns to widely inform Dabawenyos on sex-related issues.

The project will be implemented by the end of September as part of the office’s Responsible Sexuality Program.

Population Division chief Jeffrey Fuentes, during the press conference at the Davao City Hall yesterday, said the social media platform is one of the strong options to consider in addressing the issues on sex.

“Since social media is one of the platforms that is very accessible to our adolescents, we are creating a program that will engage them, educate them, and address issues regarding sex,” he said.

Fuentes said the project aims to address the recent increase in teenage pregnancy and HIV/Aids in the city.

“For Davao City in 2017 we have 12 percent of the population accounted for teenage pregnancies. For Davao region, we have 16 percent rate of teenage pregnancy which is actually far higher than the national average,” Fuentes added.

Fuentes believed that one of the major factors which influenced the rising rates of teenage pregnancies in the city is the accessible social media platforms.

“The social media actually provided the adolescents a wide array of contacts in engaging themselves into sexual activities,” Fuentes added.

Fuentes said the social media campaign will be spearheaded by a group of adolescents managed by the CPO.

“This program was established to address a certain problem, and we think that the adolescents should be running the social media campaigns because they are much well-versed with the internet language, and for the campaigns to be appealing also,” Fuentes said.