THE NEXT GENERATION: Teenagers in trouble

Sex diseases. Pregnancy. Our children are increasingly having to deal with these very adult issues - prompting a radical response to the problem in the Bay. As part of a week-long series, Julia Holmes investigates issues facing The Next Generation.
Doctors and nurses are being brought into Bay secondary schools to help fight soaring teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection rates.
The landmark programme - the first of its kind in the country - has been developed and paid for by the Western Bay Primary Health Organisation and has the overall aim of improving the health of young people.
The Bay of Plenty has the country's third-highest rate of teenage pregnancies, behind Gisborne and Northland.
School-age Bay children are also having sex at a much younger age, with clinics seeing girls as young as 12 with sexually transmitted infections (STIs).
The new scheme will see registered nurses employed by most secondary schools on a permanent, part-time basis and GPs brought in to hold clinics two hours a week.
Nurses will be appointed as student health co-ordinators at Te Puke High and Katikati, Otumoetai, Tauranga Boys' and Mount Maunganui colleges next term.
Services for Aquinas College and Bethlehem College are also planned.
PHO projects manager Carole Gordon said the programme was a major step forward in recognising adolescent health needs.
One of the main reasons teenagers sought medical advice was for sexual issues such as contraception and the morning-after pill. The programme would give students access to expert advice so they could make wise choices, Ms Gordon said.
It was part of a strategy to address "risk behaviours" in teens, which included having unprotected sex, drinking, smoking and driving too fast.
"All these choices put their current health and future wellbeing at risk. It dramatically affects lives. Young people need support to make choices. That's why we're making the investment," Ms Gordon said.
The programme would later be expanded to include Maori nurse provision and health promotion activities.
Latest figures show just over four per cent of 15 to 19-year-olds in the region fall pregnant, while the incidence of STIs has reached epidemic proportions, with more people catching chlamydia in the Bay of Plenty than in the entire South Island.
The new student health service is just one of a raft of measures across the Western Bay designed to tackle the issue of teenage promiscuity.
The Tauranga Sexual Health Clinic has been trialling a new method of testing that is proving to be effective.
Women who are not comfortable being examined can take their own swabs, an alternative that is often preferred by younger women.
Clinic nurse Jill Stanton said that while not as accurate as traditional screening methods, it was picking up cases in girls who would otherwise have been too shy to be tested.
Last month, 33 under-17s were tested this way, of these seven had chlamydia. The youngest was just 13.
Overall, the clinic, which performs about 10 per cent of all STI check-ups in the Western Bay, saw 280 teenage girls and 34 teenage boys, of whom 20 tested positive for chlamydia.
Dr Noeline Tanner, a medical officer at the clinic, said the lowering of the drinking age was partly to blame.
"We used to see a lot of 14 and 15-year-olds. Now it's 13 and 14-year-olds. I have even seen 12-year-olds with STIs," she said.
Children also became sexually aware at a much younger age as a result of images portrayed in the media and peer pressure.
"They're ready to go by the time they're 13 and 14 but they're not old enough to handle it. When they do have diseases or find out they're pregnant they're quite shocked," she said.
The Family Planning Association's (FPA) Tauranga clinic has also recognised the need to reach more young people by introducing two late nights a week to make its services available outside school hours.
"We hope that by having the clinic open on Monday and Wednesday evenings it will assist youth to access contraception if they are needing it," FPA health promoter Kathryn Keenan said.
Clinic staff regularly saw young women who did not use contraceptives correctly and consistently. Many who got pregnant unintentionally were not using any contraception at all and were not in stable relationships, she said.
"Teen pregnancy is a complex issue, influenced by many factors, including parents and family, peers, schools, religion and faith communities, and the media.
Reducing unintended pregnancies needs to be a multi-faceted approach," she added.
Raewyn Mortensen, who co-ordinates the Postponing Sexual Involvement (PSI) programme in schools across the Western Bay, said there was a myth among young people that everyone was having sex when that was not the case.
A Massey University study showed that 17 per cent of 13-year-olds, 33.3 per cent of 15-year-olds and 48.7 per cent of 17 year-olds were having sex.
PSI aimed to help students make informed choices, she said.
"We want to get across the 'wait' message. Not necessarily until marriage but until they are older and more able to cope with the consequences."