There are
two principles I was proving in those years because of my work: everybody is summoned
to make science, and your professional title does not limit to the scientific
field you want to explore. After this, I can say that in the difficult and
almost misunderstood scientific divulgation market, I’ve got achievements I’m
proud about. Across Piura Region, the journalists who specialize in that are a
little handful, and I’m the youngest among them, I guess.
The
scientific divulgation, in my opinion, is important because it allows to enable
the curiosity of the audience about something they knew a few or ignored at
all. And the curiosity you break out comes from your own curiosity, that is
also based on the curiosity of some proffessionist, specialist in a science
topic, who asked a question that seemed unnecessary one blessed day, went into
it, and realized at least that he was found a key for a door that was not open
even by using dynamite, or that we were sat down on pure dynamite, and we were
not aware, neither. And that was the case of Risky Teenage Love (Somewhere Piura Andes), published on El
Regional de Piura, in his original Spanish version, on July 30th,
2014.
The story’s
idea came from the curiosity of Obstetrician Marco Paulini Espinoza when he
asked how much the teenagers of the fifth grade Bellavista de Cachiaco
high-school, Pacaipampa District (Ayabaca Province), knew about a condom in
terms of contraceptive method. And upon that knowledge basis, what attitude they
had about its using.
Paulini
took the issue because he was doing his Rural and Uptown Health Service
(Serums, as its acronyme in Spanish) between ending-2013 and beginning 2014,
just in that village. The story of how he landed there is epic, and the better
is he tell you live by himself someday.
You will
say – why to get focused the study in teenagers just months before leaving the
basic regular education?Simple, folks. One of the strongest problems we have across
Piura, and about what we can’t chant victory yet, is the teenage pregnancy,
what means to have pregnants between 13 (11 in some countries) and 19 years old.
And some stories we gathered at Piura Andes revealed us there are pregnants
under 13 years old.
It’s
supposed the teenage is when many
women and
many menare thinking what to do abouth their life so they mature. Then,
whatever the reason, a boy or a girl comes on, and much of these plans postergate
or abort, what, in many cases, stresses the poverty conditions. And Pacaipampa
is one of Piuras districts with highest poverty levels. Add to this, Piura is
one of Peru’s regions that has one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates, 14%
to 16% in the last five years, above the Peruvian rate around 13%.
Plus, if
you invite Marco anytime to hold an educational session, a conference, or you
include him in a debate, that he tells you about the levels of existent
gender-based violence, which is very engaged to machismo and the precarious
life quality there is in many parts of Andean Peru.
As I ever
say, the value of that investigation was nobody requested it to him. He was
proactive about making it, and he proposed it as a thesis project (despite he
had sustained and approved his own undergrade thesis months before) and, in
fact, the original work from the
four-and-a-half-page story was almost 100 A4-size pages, which we excerpted the
part of results, conclusions, and we added an introduction to give it a journalistic
value, so we sent for releasing.
Of course,
that is the brief story. The manner how it born is almost funny. It was around
nine at night on July 15th, 2014, when Marco talked me quite sad
because he was trying to engage in a job after his Serums in Pacaipampa,
unsuccessfully.
In my
effort to comfort him, because that was the reason, I proposed him to work on
some topic of his area that could awake the public interest. Then, we had one
and a half months meeting each other, and one of the recurrent themes was his
life in Pacaipampa. I presume, because of his reaction, that my proposal
sounded him like fried egg over ice cream, but he didn’t say no, what was a
good signal.
The next he
did was to recuperate his whole papers he had brought from the Andes and he put
to process them into one of these softwares specialized in statistical work,
then he began to write the full document adding almost one hundred pages. We
can say he was all the possible time to do it then, and it was usefully
advantaged free time too.
Let’s make
elipsis and skip to 2014 Peruvian Anniversary. While everybody was rested or
got drunk meaning to celebrate Peru, Marco and I spent a whole day –lunch
included- working the story, and messaging the poor El Regional de Piura’s
publisher Andrés Vera that, please, wait for us because it was to arrive any
way before the closure time, after I spent three days pitching the idea to him.
If I don’t remind bad, we became to send it with photos attached, then or
twelve minutes to five in the afternoon, one of the deadlines, and very despite
our web producers, who wanted already to go home for resting. Did I mention it
was July 28th?
One day
later, 29th, we changed the original title maybe twice until it stood in its
actual writing country song-style. Well, the story was produced at a rural
environment, so the literary license was appropriate. Then, I figured out the rural philosophy was
making a short circuit wwith all the policies of pregnancy prevention or sexual
initiation postergation, and, in my opinion, the answers the teenagers gave
were romantically absurd, like I could make it with my boy friend not using a
protection as a love proof. So, forgive me, but there is nointerculturality you
allege about: or you apply rationality to your life project, or you waste your
life by opening or closing the eyes, not that you’re thinking of because it
could sound quite ugly.
Yes, of
course. I was also a teenager, and I also belief I could bring down all the
starss to the being who you love to. But as you grow up, and you understand
that the metaphoric sounds nice but scientifically improbable, and it also generates
a vulnerable scenario for a part of the population, there’s no worthy
romanticism. Or you act with maturity, or you are part of the problem.
Thus, as
Marco says, if you are not to protect, at least see how you are going to
prevent, and the condom has proven it can be until 97% success for avoiding
pregnancies and 95%success for prevention of sexually transmited diseases,
including HIV/AIDS. And in a region like Piura, that is 150 thousand people up
to reach two million habitants, according to the last Census, the decisions that
teenagers and young take regarding to their sexuality are, indeed, a public
health issue, especially when you have 5th-grade high-school kids
having a 7% knowledge and 5% positive attitude before the using of condom. And
the other 95%, what?, I mean.
And if we
carry that to public policies management, that have actually accostummed the
poorest people to government or corporate dependence, then you understand the
transcendence of investigation works wit those characteristics. Look – I don’t
say this is the only one of its kind, what I say is this is one of the few when
the author trusted in a journalist and decided to make it public.
That is the
value of Marco Paulini’s study, and that is the value that almost nobody ,
except the colleagues of Radio Cutivalú (add to El Regional de Piura’s crew, I
mean), could see once published, and, forgive me, even the efforts of the
Regional Government of Piura for decreasing the rates in some districts, where
they inclusive have put specialized offices in teenagers assistance, had the
expected result despite the work, neiter.
I don’t insinuate
it’s lost time and money. What I say is that no matter the effort our
authorities do, the problem is the cultural environments where teenagers and
young grow up, and where an anti-Semitic-style campaign, because it is so,
anti-Semitic, Hitlerian, says there’s no right to act. Maybe no acting, but
actually displaying enough scientific information for teenagers and young to
take their own decisions, because if you don’t teach them to be responsible since
kids, and realizing Maluma and company, and the Peruvian union of cumbia as
well, are fucking brainwashers, tthey won’t be responsible along their
personal, family, professional, and social life. Already, if with all the
information, they insist to disgrace their lives, it’s their business, but the
government already played its part, no matter if it seems pretty cruel.
Paulini himself repeated the task in 2016, this time with family planning service users
in Huasimal de la Solana, Lancones District (Sullana Province), now about the
attitude regarding the emergency oral contraceptive, that recently was
supported by the Peruvian justice for being distributed in the health public
system for free, and he found again that cultural and religious believes of the
population, many of them based again upon the machismo, ended to put in risk
the life of women and kept many violence cases ending in unwanted pregnancies,
and the obsessive attitude of mothers who confessed they would control the
sexuality of their kidsas much as forbidding the use of contraceptive methods.
And what
deserved Marco Paulini in exchange for its effort? Nothing, no thanks neiter. Even
with the published story and blasting in hits (all Marco’s stories ended 2014
with more than 20 thousand hits on El
Regional de Piura), the Health director entity, at least in regional level,
felt like a mosquito flew, slapping included. Maybe the administration of Jorge
Camino, instead, recognized him on behalf of Sullana Province Municipality, and
La Matanza District Municipality invited him to hold an educational session in
its townhall and a local high-school (then the mayor was Nelson Mío, now
Morropón Province’s Mayor), but Pacaipampa District’s and less the Ayabaca
Province’s reported not to be aware about.
OK, they
maybe had not to be aware, but if you’re an authority concerned to solve
problems in your community, at least you had to phone him: “Obstetrician
Paulini, and what action plan do you suggest?” And that feature had –well, has-
actually an action plan: to insist in educating for prevention, and making
closer the sexual and reproductive health services to teenagers. Eventually,
the Peruvian government has implemented the second one. The first one, I
insist, with this fake veil of the moral has sserved to disguising
doctrinal-religious argues, instead of widely technical-scientific debates. Because
in those cases, you forgive me, the science will save us. There’s no
other way.
And Marco
Paulini proved it when he was assigned by the Luciano Castillo Colonna Health
Under-Regional Bureau to the posts
network at Sapillica District, reaching with that crew and the prominent
district’s institutions the feat, because it is so, to reduce the annual amount
of maternal deaths (it was three) to zero (yes, zero) by ending 2016, record
that held, until I checked out in our archive, during 2017. By the way, the
machismo –the negative cultural patterns, again- is one of the causes for
maternal mortality, at least in that territory.
That’s why
is too important the professional contribution he did to the international
campaign One Billion Rising from Sullana, for fighting against the gender-based
violence, understanding that the effort can’t last one only day but everyday,
every minute, or his virtual participation to the 2014 Annual Conference of
Businesspersons, held in Paracas, Ica, where El Regional de Piura had a pretty
lot to do.
And that’s
what I celebrate five years later. That the solutions journalism, like it’s
called now that type of the contents production, had generated, first,
curiosity in the audience, second, the need to see if it’s about a general
pattern or an isolated fact (we realized it’s the option number one), and third, these plans have to be pitched
into the existent social forums for these facts to reverse or prevent.
And in the
scientific divulgation journalism, the investigative journalism, or the
solutions journalism, or just journalism, if you don’t ally to someone who
never went into a newsroom to explore these action plans, you’ll hardly see
that a reality changes.
And in this
point, I want to remember the divulgation work that Marco does on his own blog https://marcopaulini.blogspot.com/ that has given us the satisfaction of getting
positive interactions in English-speaker audience, at very complicated markets
as the United States, England, United Arab Emirates, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda,
and even Jordan and Afghanistan. And they are organic twitterers, just in case.
Although nobody
else cares about it, I’m proud for making that little milestone, and making
that the contens we have produced help you to take better decisions. And of
course, I’m proud of Piura’s talent that continues to row ahead and above, that
follows to evolve. I continue to generate contents that way, Marco follows
working wit me when he can and is free from his Human Medicine studies at
Piura’s César Vallejo University, pretty scored by the way. I’m excited to
believe there will be an upcoming challenge, and we’ll take it for sure!