Abstract:
The changing demographic and socio-economic scenarios throughout the world have unfolded many
important issues that demand the immediate focus of all relevant members of the world community.
Among these, the sexual and reproductive health of the population is an important issue to that needs to
be addressed immediately throughout the countries in the developing world where the quality of health
has a major impact on the development process.
The broad and comprehensive definition of reproductive health, adopted by the 1994 International
Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) encompasses not merely women of childbearing
age, but the reproductive health of all age groups of both sex. Nevertheless, more importantly, since the
current generation of adolescents and youth constitute the immediate next generation of parents, their
preparation for reproduction and sexuality has tremendous implications for their individual as well as
national reproductive health outcomes. Thus the Programme of Action (PoA) developed and adopted by
the ICPD highlighted the importance of “addressing the adolescent sexual and reproductive health issues,
including unwanted pregnancy, unsafe abortion and sexually transmitted diseases, and HIV/AIDS, by
promoting responsible and healthy reproductive and sexual practices, voluntary abstinence, and the
provision of services and appropriate counseling specifically suitable for that age group” (United Nations,
1994).
The entry into the reproductive phase of the lifecycle is an important threshold in a person’s life in which
the choice and the behavioural patterns acquired during early adolescence will determine the subsequent
life course (United Nations, 1989). Important steps in this transitional process are several critical life
events such as puberty, initiation to sexuality, marriage and childbearing. The timing as well as the
sequence and context in which these events take place have immediate and long-term repercussions for a
particular individual’s sexual and reproductive health. Generally, the commencement of adolescence is
associates with a period of rapid physical growth, in which a gradual development of the reproductive
organs occurs along with the appearance of gender specific secondary sex characteristics and menarche in
girls.
In many countries of the developing region, due to generally low level of mortality and morbidity among
children and adolescents, the overall well-being of this segment of the population has not been on the
agenda for discussion among policy makers. In this decade, their issues and problems received priority
mainly because of the strong advocacy by governments, individuals, organizations, and international
agencies in the region (De Silva, 1998).