Ismat Bhuiya, MSc MPH, IPD, Population Council, House # CES (B) 21, Road # 118, Gulshan, Dhaka, 1212, Bangladesh, 880 2 882-1227, ibhuiya@pcdhaka.org

Bangladesh constitutes 33 million adolescents. In HIV/AIDS arena adolescents lack information on sexuality, contraception, and STIs/HIV/AIDS. Family and school play an important role in the lives of adolescent. But neither family nor school provide psychological and informational support at this age. This article highlights adolescents’ vulnerability in getting psychological support, and sexual and reproductive health (SRH) information and services. A population based survey was conducted among 3102 adolescents and followed by 31 case studies to further investigate the vulnerability.

10% of the interviewed adolescents had pre-marital sexual exposure, of them 6% had sex with commercial sex workers (CSWs). Of them two-fifth had never used condom during sex with CSWs. 48% smoked and 8% and 11% had of having liquor and drugs respectively. 97% of adolescents opined that school should provide SRH education. 90% of them agreed on use of condom for protecting infections and pregnancy, but only 10% of them had favorable attitude towards service providers for seeking contraceptive services. The findings from case studies revealed that adolescents had lack of supportive environment which include less valued their opinion (85%), treat them as minor (75%), suspicious (60%), no encouragement (50%), hatetred (40%), no caring (30%), no sympathy (20%). Thus, they do not have clear vision for future, lack of good friends and suffered from frustration which led them indulge into risk behavior.

Therefore, the social environments need to be sensitized urgently for understanding adolescents' vulnerability and the adolescents are to be equipped with SRH information and services.

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