Youth – Improving Health Awareness among Youth

Jail is a place in community where criminal and convicted inmates are kept for a certain period and are released with the intentions that they will be the useful members of the society in future. In Pakistan, youth offenders face a number of physical and mental health problems in jail. The study “Prevalence of Tuberculosis and contagious diseases in Jail” reported that prevalence of communicable disease such as TB, hepatitis and sexually transmitted diseases are high in jails This could be due to many factors such as lack of awareness and over-crowding. The data of Sind jail reveals that inmates in women jails are typically of low socio-economic status having low levels of education, histories of physical, mental and sexual abuses. Further prevalence of mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, low self-esteem and suicide attempts are also high among women inmates. There is an urgent need to create awareness in youth inmates/offenders in Jails at Karachi, Sind about health problems and diseases such as hepatitis, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and use of narcotics as it is rising alarmingly in the prisons of Sind. Hence improving awareness on youth health issues among youth offenders (including juvenile youth) is important and could be a first step towards primary prevention of health problems such as sexually transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS and mental health. Society for Health & Education Development (SHED) organized Youth Health Awareness sessions at in Jails at Karachi, Sind from 8th May to 23rd May 2013 to facilitate the youth offenders. The main purpose of the program was to create awareness among the participants that how to take preventive measures from incurable diseases like Aids, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C and also make them understand about the social problems of the youth.