Kumasi, Dr. Thomas Agyarko-Poku, Chairman of the Youth Committee of the Planned Parenthood Association of Ghana (PPAG), has suggested that family life education should be incorporated in the syllabuses of primary schools. This is to expose children to sex education early enough to curb adolescent sexuality. Speaking on ”Adolescent sexuality” at a symposium to mark Nurses Day in the Ashanti Region, Dr. Agyarko-Poku said children must be introduced to sex education stage by stage during the pre-adolescent period and not at adolescence when they might have experimented with their sexuality already. He said adolescent sexuality is already a reality in the country since available demographic and health surveys indicate that a lot of youth have their sexual experience as early as ten years and that 62 per cent of sexual experience is outside the context of marriage. Dr. Agyarko-Poku said a number of adolescents are already sexually active and this may be attributed partly to the “culture of silence” about sex education either in the home or at school. “While children must be taught the real names of their genitals, they should not be told that what hangs in between their thighs are snakes”, he added.
