65% of Tico Kids Don’t Know How AIDS Is Transmitted
by Rod Hughes
Here’s a scary figure:
A recent study of 500 Costa Rican adolescents showed that 65% of them do not know how the HIV virus is transmitted. Even more chilling is that the survey showed that, of those who admitted having sexual contact, 50% began relations between the ages of 12 and 15.
Naturally, the overwhelming majority of those sexual relations were without condoms. The study also uncovered a vast ignorance and number of sexual myths.
Financed by the Social Security Administration (Caja), the Costa Rican Child Welfare Foundation (PANIAMOR) and the International Childhood Defense Foundation, the survey results coincide with those turned up by the Adolescent Clinic of the National Children’s Hospital. The Caja is now preparing a special prevention manual aimed at adolescents.
Although high schools in the country have sex education classes, frank analysis of the problem in class is rare and efforts for venereal disease prevention are hampered by the Catholic Church, the official religion in the country and one of the most conservative in the world. The hierarchy is vehemently opposed to condom use. Moreover, these classes are often conducted to older students who have already had unprotected sexual relations.
The final piece of chilling data is that the majority of those survey who had had sexual relations had older persons as partners, a further risk for the youngsters.