The Manila Health Department is intensifying its drive against HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), as the city health office plans to conduct HIV testing in all barangays citywide.
At the same time, Dr. Arnold Pangan, RSW, Acting City Health Officer, said they also planned to intensify the campaign against teenage pregnancies.
“There will be a citywide, in all the 896 barangays, awareness and testing for HIV. We will go down to the barangays to conduct training, education and testing on HIV, for those who want to be tested,” said Pangan, in his message during meeting with the Manila Association of Public Secondary Schools Administrators, held at the Eulogio Rodriguez Vocational High School, in Manila, on Friday, Feb. 21.
Pangan said the program called “School-based Fertility Awareness and Sexually Transmitted Infection Awareness” will again be implemented this year in all public schools hoping to bring down the incidence of HIV and also lower teenage pregnancies.
He said, in the Philippines, there were 35 to 40 new cases every day of HIV infection in the whole Philippines.
Pangan said Manila was second to the highest in this incidence, with Quezon City having the highest incidence in HIV infection.
The age group with the highest incidence is ages 15 to 24 years of age, teenagers to young adults.
In Manila alone, almost every day, there is at least one individual who tests positive for HIV infection, Pangan said.
“And this includes some of the students in our public high schools,” Pangan said.
“I am hoping that you would give your support to this program. I hope that we would be successful in this program. We were hoping that with this program, teenage pregnancy will go lower in the future, and eventually be eradicated in Manila,” said Pangan.
Pangan said the MHD has taught the MAPEH (Music, Arts, Physical Education, and Health) teachers about the reproductive health and contraceptive use so that the teachers, in turn, could teach the students in school, since he lamented that they do not have any control on what actions the students will do regarding sex.
In this way, the information given to the MAPEH teachers to be taught the students would help try to avoid teenage pregnancy as well as avoid contracting the deadly HIV.
Pangan said that they wanted the students to finish high school without getting pregnant or sick.
“In this way, they could be given a chance to have a better future and opportunities in life if they are able to finish high school and college,” Pangan said.
“Before the start of the school year in 2020, we will retrain our MAPEH teachers, so that before the start of the school year, they would be prepared to teach the students. The MHD will also put up posters on ‘Responsable Ako, Huwag Maging BIBA (Batang Ina, Batang Ama)’, to remind the students to avoid teenage pregnancies,” he said.
The posters will be placed in the entrances of each public school beside the “No Smoking” signs.
The MAPEH teachers are also urged to check on the family background of each student so that they would know how to approach each problem of each student in teaching them.
Pangan said there is a possibility that there are other problems the children have and have not been known by the teachers, which causes these children to engage in teenage sex.
So a profile of each student is important in order to understand the background of the child, he said.
They will also ask the help of social workers from the Manila Department of Social Welfare so that the students can be evaluated.
HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) is a virus that attacks cells that help the body fight infection, making a person more vulnerable to other infections and diseases. It is spread by contact with certain bodily fluids of a person with HIV, most commonly during unprotected sex (sex without a condom), or through sharing injection drug equipment.
If left untreated, HIV can lead to the disease AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome).
