Sitting at an old street-side tea stall in Phnom Penh, waves of moto exhaust wash over you one after another. Sareth Bor Leakhena, deputy executive director of the Reproductive Health Association of Cambodia, spoke out recently, noting that maternal mortality rates here have dropped by more than 60 percent over the past two decades—a pretty encouraging number on paper.
Yet out on the streets and in rented rooms, young people are still completely in the dark when it comes to these issues. Comprehensive sex education is missing from schools, finding reliable information isn't easy, and society is still stuck looking at things through a judgmental lens. Because of these hurdles, many young folks are too scared to seek timely medical help for fear of being pointed at and gossiped about.
Local media report that she is now publicly calling on the government to properly integrate comprehensive sex education into the school curriculum. On top of that, the state needs to allocate a national budget to produce teaching materials and train teachers so that everyone understands responsible sexual behavior, gets regular reproductive health check-ups, and cuts down on discrimination against people with sexually transmitted infections and the LGBTQ+ community.
