The First Lady, Jeannette Kagame, has called on parents to have interactions with their adolescent children concerning reproductive health as a way of helping them smoothly transition through this difficult stage in life.

The call was made in a new book by Imbuto Foundation titled, "Tuganire Mwana Wanjye” (let’s interact, my child), which was launched on Saturday in Gicumbi District during the closure of the Health Week, a campaign by the Ministry of Health.

The book is published to equip parents with information and knowledge regarding Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH), which they will share with their adolescent children.

There is a level of growth a child goes through that is difficult for parents and the children themselves; it is a stage of many changes that happen between ages 10 to 24, reads part of the First Lady’s foreword in the book.

"This book has been prepared to help you (the parents) handle this situation. It will provide you with important information on reproductive health which will help you interact freely with your children, answering questions that you are asking yourselves as well as those your children can ask you,” it reads.

She also urges parents to approach health centres near them and ask questions concerning what they do not understand about reproductive health.

Speaking on behalf of Imbuto Foundation at the launch of the book, Amb. Jacqueline Mukangira, a board member of the Foundation, said the book was inspired by the need that parents always came to them seeking such information.

"It was our idea to write this book after being asked by many parents who come for our different conferences to have somewhere they can easily get information on how best to interact with children on the sensitive matters of reproductive health,” she said.

Mukangira said it is parents that have the primary information about reproductive health as needed by their children yet they always face a challenge of lack of tools to use in delivering this information to the children, a fact that has been hindering the parent-child communication process.

"The youth especially girls under 18 get early pregnancies. This has bad outcomes on their lives; they lose value, some contract sexually transmitted diseases, they drop out of school. In different interactions we have with them, youths tell us that they don’t have enough information about the functioning of their bodies,” she said.

With parent-child interactions, Mukangira added that even more problems like drug abuse among the youth can be eradicated as parents impart values like integrity, nationalism and hard work to their children.

Mukangira took the opportunity to send a copy of the book to the Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion and community health workers.

Imbuto Foundation has previously published another book about reproductive health called Agaciro Kanjye (my value) for adolescents between 15 to 24 years old.

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