By Thuy Nguyen

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam – Vietnam has one of the highest abortion rates in the world and 30 percent of the estimated 500,000 procedures performed there each year are performed on teenagers, according to the latest statistics from the Vietnamese Committee for Population, Family and Children. The committee also found that 28.8 percent of Vietnamese teenagers don’t know how to protect themselves against sexually transmitted diseases. Half of the HIV infections in Vietnam involve people under 25.

Vietnamese teenagers said their lack of knowledge about sexual behavior and reproductive health stems from a societal reticence that is similar in other developing Asian nations.

“There isn’t any official sex education in our country,” said Thang Long, 19. Long graduated from Le Hong Phong High School in Ho Chi Minh City.

Some sex education programs have appeared in Vietnamese schools in recent years, but many call these programs inadequate. They rarely address university students and have not yet become commonplace in high schools.

Cao Vinh, a 16-year-old student in Singapore International School (SIS) said his only exposure to sex education was a two-hour lecture. “All the boys gathered together in a classroom and a specialist lectured about teenage psychological knowledge,” Vinh said. “But her directions were very dry, and she wasn’t ready to answer our questions.” The situation is similar for girls, Vinh said.

The committee’s latest research shows that on average a Vietnamese teenager has sex for the first time at 14.5 years old. This suggests that many teenagers become sexually active long before they ever receive any guidance, if they do at all. Some basic information is inserted into biology or civics classes, but it is vague, the students said.

Youth Union Central, the most popular organization for Vietnamese young people, is working with the European Union and the United Nations Population Fund to launch clinics in the high schools, but even those have failed to help, students said.

“I’ve been in this school for two years, but I’ve never heard of any remarkable activity from that office,” said Kim Khanh, 17, a student at Marie Curie High School. Khanh’s school was the first in Ho Chi Minh City to create a clinic in 2004.

Teenagers said their parents, as well as their teachers, are reluctant to discuss such a delicate subject, so the teenagers feel discouraged to ask questions. Instead, Vinh said, he and his friends learn about sex from their peers, the Internet, or books and magazines. However, information from those sources can sometimes be confusing or even frightening, he said.

“Many friends of mine became frightened out of their wits,” said Phuong Thanh, a 17-year-old student from Le Hong Phong High School. “They wanted to know what was happening to them, but the adults didn’t tell them.” Consequently, teenagers cannot protect themselves and end up seeking abortions or spreading sexually transmitted diseases, Thanh said.

Noting that sexual and reproductive health classes are routinely included in the school curriculum in neighboring China, Thanh said she believes sex education would be the best remedy for Vietnamese teenagers too.

But for now Thanh and other Vietnamese teenagers say they are still waiting for someone to teach them important life lessons.