Denied Birth Control, Teens Around the World Still Have Sex — Unsafe Sex

Refinery 29 (June 16, 2016): Denied Birth Control, Teens Still Have Sex — Unsafe Sex, by Hayley MacMillen:

From the 2016 International Conference on Family Planning in Indonesia, Refinery 29 provides first hand accounts of young people denied safe sex options and education.  A recent Lancet study has identified unsafe sex as the fastest growing risk factor for ill health for  young people around the world.  At the conference, attendees stressed the importance of accurate, as well as widespread, sex ed to all adolescents.  Haley MacMillen writes:

Birth control fallacies are, of course, not limited to East Africa but crop up wherever medically accurate, comprehensive sex ed is withheld. When I ask Philippines-based journalist and sex columnist Ana Santos, another attendee of the International Conference on Family Planning, about    contraception myths in her country, she’s armed with some horrifying ones. People believe that "jumping after sex will prevent pregnancy" — although she notes, drily, that "a jump from what height is never mentioned" — and that "drinking coconut juice laced with bleach or Tide detergent will wash away the spermies." And since condoms can be hard to come by, people, especially young people, wrap Calypso plastic, a brand used to package iced candy, around their penises instead. "Totally ouchy, right?" Santos asks. Yes. And ineffective.

The article emphasizes the need for comprehensive sex ed  - both internationally and locally - in order to help young people around the world and around the corner.