DAVAO City Councilor Mary Joselle Dilig-Villafuerte expressed her support for the condom distribution to high school students, which has generated mixed reaction among different sectors.
Villafuerte, who heads the Committee on Health, said it is high time to combat the alarming increase of Human Immunodeficiency Virus-Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (HIV-Aids) cases in the city.
She said, right now the numbers of those engaged in high-risk sexual behaviors do not use condoms, which is one big factor that contributed the increase in HIV-Aids cases.
“I will support the government’s program, so if they intend to do a condom distribution, I will make sure that all concerned parties will be heard,” she said.
The councilor plans to have a discussion with officials from the Department of Education (Deped) and Commission on Higher Education (Ched) to discuss on the matter.
“If you ask me being a physician and having studied the HIV-Aids and how it is spread and also looking at the countries na naging (that have been) successful in decreasing the HIV-Aids numbers, we really need to consider the condom use,” she said.
She assured that no condoms will be distributed in Davao City schools if there are sectors who will oppose to its implementation.
“We will try to talk and make sure that we get the support of all the parties concerned especially the youth,” she said.
The councilor said the efforts are focused on high school students because of their vulnerability since part of the key affected population in the rising HIV-Aids is the 17-24 years old age group.
“I know we don’t want to think our children having sex but it’s really happening. We need to talk about it, the schools teachers, the church we need to talk about it and we need to talk together para mapaubos ang number (to reduce the numbers),” she said.
This is not to promote pre-marital sex, contrary to the speculation, but rather a counter measure, she added.
The Commission of Population in July reported that Davao Region ranked third highest in the number of youth engaged in pre-marital sex in 2013 with 38.5 percent or 370,000, a figure higher by 15.3 points from 23.2 percent in 2002.
Of this figure, 295,000 or 8 in 10 participated in their first pre-marital sex encounter without any form of protection against sexually transmitted infections or unwanted pregnancies.