By Yunus S Saliu
In a closed door meeting held at the Education Ministry, the Principal Investigator of the project for Strengthening Access to Quality Comprehensive Health Education for in-and-out of School Adolescents in Region I, The Gambia has updated Minister of Basic and Secondary Education on progress made on the ongoing comprehensive health education research findings dissemination exercise.
In her briefing, the Principal Investigator of the project, Ms Phebian Ina Grant-Sagnia who is also Principal Health Researcher Ministry of Health stated that the ongoing research findings dissemination exercise, the team has visited many schools within the scheduled in Banjul City Council and Kanifing Municipal Council.
According to her 43 schools listed to benefit from the ongoing dissemination process of the comprehensive health education research findings that follows the dissemination of CHE information exercise with different stakeholders which included National Assembly Members, Mayors, school principals/teachers, counselors, communities and religious leaders, youths, representative from different CSOs among others.
She gave a comprehensive discussion on CHE, the main findings and as well responses of students and their teachers.
She disclosed that reasons or factors that were reported as responsible for the limited adolescent-parent communication about sexual and reproductive health issues were mostly cultural, due to shame and shyness but also to the competing responsibilities of parents as breadwinners.
In her response, Minister Claudiana Cole expressed delight and great interest in the work of the Principal Investigator of the CHE research project and team.
She assured the team of her Ministry’s commitment and support for the project in particular how it will be extended to other regions across the country especially that it is been recommended by many stakeholders that it should be a standalone subject.
More so, if it become a permanent standalone subject, the Ministry will work on it and see how it become an examinable subject and this will guide and help students give more attention, know themselves and how their bodies are functioning as regard to reproductive issues which many parents found difficult to discuss with their children, she said.
Meanwhile she told the principal investigator that some teachers were trained in the past on CHE but can still be a refresher training course for them on the subject if the need arise.
