TANAUAN,Leyte-With the declaration of a national social emergency on teenage pregnancy, schools have an important role to play to help address this problem.
Thus said Rose Guino, education program supervisor of the regional office of the Department of Education (DepEd) during a media forum organized by the Commission on Population and Development (Popcom) on Tuesday (Nov.11) held this town.
Guino said that they are fully aware that cases of teenage pregnancy in the region involving female students are in the rise reason why there is a need for the DepEd to step in to help address the problem.
She also said that teachers are ‘equipped’ to teach about sex education on their students as teaching them on the matter would provide essential informations to their students, particularly the girls, and in the process, drive them the ill-effects of bearing a child at an early age.
“We make sure that our students will listen to us and will not trivialized the matter and not make a fun out of it but rather take it seriously,” she said.
“As teachers, we are here to guide them,” Guino added.
According to her, teachers have enough knowledge and information on teaching their students about sex education as they have attended seminars on the issue initiated by proper agencies like the Popcom and not just rely on books.
Earlier, Popcom said that teenage pregnancy is now a national social emergency due to high number of female teenagers getting pregnant.
Based on the Popcom-8 records, cases of teenage pregnancy in the region stand at about 6.9 percent comprising the population of 10 to 19 years old of teenage girls.
And of this number, what two percent of them have repeated pregnancies.
Also disturbing is about 247 schools across the region reported of teenage pregnancy cases.
The Popcom-8, headed by Elnora Pulma, has intensified on their campaign against teenage pregnancy with the aim of at least reducing its cases.
She, however, appealed to the parents and other stakeholders like education personnel, to help them on their campaign saying Popcom could not solve it by itself. (JOEY A. GABIETA)
