Indian doctors advocate promotion of sex education in schools

Indian doctors believe sex education should be taught in schools like any other subject.

Chennai, Feb 18 : Indian doctors believe sex education should be taught in schools like any other subject.

Sing the platform of the Third International Conference on Sexology here, about 400 doctors from the India and 30 from abroad favoured sex education being a part of the school curriculum.

"Parents have to understand. They have to teach their children that school is the best place, that is where you get your education. When you teach everything sociology, physics, history, science, teach them sex, even the disease," said Arul Kannan, a sexologist based in the US.

The medical experts also called for a ban on pornographic websites.

"Pornography is not sexology. Sexual scientific knowledge is different from pornography. Pornography stimulates a man to act without thinking, indulge in a sexual activity. That should be curbed," said T. Kamaraj, the Chairman of the Indian Association for Sexology and a consultant in sexual medicine.

The governments of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh have banned sex education in public schools because they say the learning modules are too explicit and graphic.

The Central Government has been unable to prevent these bans even as it seeks to curb the spread of HIV.

India has roughly 2.5 million people infected with HIV, less than half the number of cases that previous studies estimated.

An earlier U.N. study had estimated 5.7 million HIV cases, which would have been the highest total in the world.

But as per the latest available data, India, which has a population of 1.1 billion, has fewer HIV cases than South Africa and Nigeria.

ANI