UAE | Health
Emphasis must be on abstinence in sex education
Sex education in the Middle East, while important, should not address ways to prevent sexually-transmitted diseases, says a Gulf sexual medicine specialist, putting a damper on HIV/Aids awareness efforts in the region.
- By Nina Muslim, Staff Reporter
- Published: 00:00 February 12, 2007
- Dr Amr Jad, consultant urologist at the Riyadh Armed Forces Hospital in Saudi Arabia, said he and a group of doctors were preparing a how-to guide that would focus on abstinence and monogamy, and answer sexual questions.
- Image Credit: Nina Muslim/Gulf News
Dubai: Sex education in the Middle East, while important, should not address ways to prevent sexually-transmitted diseases, says a Gulf sexual medicine specialist, putting a damper on HIV/Aids awareness efforts in the region.
Dr Amr Jad, consultant urologist at the Riyadh Armed Forces Hospital in Saudi Arabia, said he and a group of doctors were preparing a how-to guide that would focus on abstinence and monogamy, and answer sexual questions.
However, methods to prevent infection by a sexually-transmitted disease (STD), or safe sex, are not included in the guide, which he hoped would be the blueprint for regional community sex education programmes.
"Doctors should only address preventive methods if there is already [an infection]. If there is none, then there is no need," he told Gulf News after presenting his lecture on how to conduct sex education in the Middle East at the Pan Arab Society for Sexual Medicine (PASSM) conference. "We should only emphasise condoms as a contraceptive and to use them as protection in marriage. Teaching people about something that they are not allowed to do will increase chances of them doing it," he added.
He also rejected a two-pronged approach to the issue of sex education, including preventive measures as well as religious prohibitions, saying it was incompatible with religious values.
Important
However, he said doctors dealing with community sex education should answer questions about condoms if the public requested.
But Dr Tarek Anees, president of PASSM, said teaching preventive methods was important to prevent HIV/Aids and other STD cases.
"Abstinence is a 100 per cent effective method to prevent STDs and teenage pregnancies, but we still have to teach that if you must have sex, then it is better to practise safe sex. But this does not mean we are promoting safe sex over abstinence," he added.
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