Matthew Vella
The University of Malta’s policy on condom machines and the decision on whether to install them on campus “is in the hands of the students”, education minister Dolores Cristina has told Parliament.
Answering a PQ by Labour MP Owen Bonnici, Cristina made no mention of whether the educational authorities are even interested in seeing a condom machine make its dramatic appearance on the university grounds.
Nine years since the call for a national sexual health policy was made, the Maltese government is still grappling with its seemingly niggling aversion to contraception.
“I think the answer left much to be desired,” Owen Bonnici said.
“If the issue will be left up for the students to be decided, has the government entered into discussions with the student body? I think the University should have a proper medical station.”
A draft national health policy presented to the Health Ministry in July 2008 was returned with practically every reference to the word “condom” deleted. On that occasion, Dr Philip Carabot – head of the genito-urinary clinic at the Boffa Hospital, and an outspoken advocate for a national policy on sexual health – described the resulting watered-down document as “nothing but a paper exercise with no bite whatsoever.”
A month later, he was prevented by Social Policy Minister John Dalli from giving media interviews or talking to the press. According to the ministry, the subject about which Dr Carabot was to be interviewed – sexual health, given his expertise – “was still being discussed so that an official policy will be finalised” and it was deemed “prudent” to hold interview at the appropriate time.
But the taboo subject has been at “discussion stage” for the past decade, with sex education remaining at the discretion of individual schools.
The most recent Health Behaviour of School-aged Children study (HBSC), co-ordinated by WHO and published last month, revealed that 64% of sexually active adolescents had never used a condom.
University taboo
A study by sociology student Charlene Said among 200 students reveals that contraception is still considered a taboo by almost half the students attending the university, and that 44% of male theology students think that contraceptives should not be permitted.
While 37.4% believe that contraceptives should be available in shops at the university, only 26.7% would like a condom vending machine in the gents’ toilet and a mere 17.6% would like the same service in the ladies’ toilet.
The results came in the wake of a petition to introduce a condom vending machine that only managed to attract a trifling 200 signatures: one-fortieth of the university’s 8,000 plus population.
Although former Health Minister Louis Deguara had declared his agreement with the university students’ petition to introduce a condom vending machine on the Tal-Qroqq campus, the university remains up to this day a condom-free zone.
The picture emerging from Said’s study is that university students – 92% of whom claim to profess the Catholic faith – are neither too liberal nor too conservative in their attitude towards artificial contraception.
More than three quarters of respondents (75.9%) believe that the individual should be the one to decide on contraceptive use, and the Catholic Church should not interfere.
The perception that the church has an overbearing influence on public policy is also confirmed by Said’s study. 65.8% of respondents believe that the Catholic Church in Malta influences governmental policies on contraception.
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