By IBARRA C. MATEO
PRESIDENT Benigno S. Aquino’s appointee to the post of health secretary said Thursday he supports the teaching of sex education among Filipino students and the passage of a reproductive health bill.
In his first press conference, Dr. Enrique T. Ona said he sees no problem on “how or when” sex education should be taught.
Ona, 71, a famous kidney transplant surgeon, said the teaching of sex education should be done in a scientific manner or with a biological approach to the reproductive process.
“What is important is that it is taught in a way that is expressed as a manifestation love and the creation of a good family,” said Ona, the executive director of the National Kidney and Transplant Institute since 1998.
On the controversial issue of the proposed Reproductive Health Bill, Ona said: “I support the issue of reproductive health,” but added quickly that he is opposed to abortion.
Abortion is illegal in the Philippines, but reproductive health advocates say studies estimate that clandestine and often risky abortion procedures have led to about 1,000 female deaths in 2008 and about 90,000 needed hospitalizations due to abortion complications.
“One of the biggest sins in the world is to bring in children and not being able to raise them responsibly,” said Ona, who is a Roman Catholic.
The Philippine Catholic hierarchy strongly opposes the passage of a Reproductive Health bill, as well as the teaching of sex education in schools, insisting that it is the parents’ duty to do, at home.
Couples should be given objective, well-informed options on responsible parenthood, and choices on natural and scientific methods of family planning, said Ona. “In terms of strategy, we will do what is most successful in this direction,” he said.
In 2009, the Guttmacher Institure said that without contraceptive use, there would be 1.3 million more unplanned births, 900,000 more induced abortions, and 3,500 more maternal deaths each year. The Philippines has one of the fastest population growth rates in Southeast Asia.
The institute also said the high level of unplanned child-bearing in the Philippines indicates a high level of unintended pregnancies. An estimated 3.4 million Filipino women became pregnant in 2008, with 54 percent of them or 1.9 million not wanting to have a child so soon or at all.
On a personal note, Ona told reporters that he was “surprised” to receive a call from the office of Aquino for a meeting at the Times Street, the President’s private residence, where the 50-year-old bachelor asked him, “if you face the Commission on Appointments, do you think there would be problems?”
“I did not know the President personally or his close family. I have not met him before the meeting at his Times residence,” he told reporters.
In the morning before he was designated health secretary, his close associates said, he even operated on a patient and that it surprised them when they saw the transplant expert on television together with President Aquino.
Ona graduated from the UP College of Medicine in 1962, spent seven years of surgical residency in Long Island College Hospital and St. Claire Hospital, both in New York and Lahey Clinic in Boston.
The powerful bipartisan Commission on Appointments of the Congress has to approve all Cabinet appointments, among others.