Does reproductive health refer to individual reproductive health?

Of course not. Reproductive health is a comprehensive concept covering individuals, partners, groups and even the entire social public service system. It does not only refer to the reproductive system health of a single individual.

I usually do reproductive health education in the community, and I always encounter residents who equate reproductive health with "there is nothing wrong with their reproductive system." Last time, a young man born in 1995 came to receive free condoms and talked about his girlfriend's recurring fungal vaginitis.

In fact, it is not surprising that this kind of misunderstanding occurs. The early academic definition of reproductive health was indeed the first to start from the individual physiological dimension. The core is that the individual reproductive system has no organic disease, has normal functions, and can complete the reproductive process independently and safely. It was not until the 1994 Cairo International Conference on Population and Development. The definition of reproductive health has been updated in a formal way, and the scope has been expanded from the individual to a wider dimension. Now the consensus in the industry has long jumped out of the individual framework. However, many ordinary people and even some grassroots science popularization content still remain in the old understanding, and the controversy over "whether reproductive health is only a personal matter" has arisen.

Take the pregnancy preparation that everyone is most familiar with. Many people still think that the inability to get pregnant and keep the fetus is entirely the woman’s problem. In fact, the quality of the man’s sperm, the sexual hygiene habits of both parties, and even the emotional state during pregnancy preparation are all content that reproductive health should cover. I met a young couple before, and checked the physiological indicators of both men and women. They were all normal. They were trying to conceive for a year and a half, but they still couldn't get pregnant. After sitting down and having a deep conversation, I found out that the man was afraid of "I'll sorry for his wife if it doesn't work out" every time they had sex. He was so stressed that he was in a state of abnormality every time. After adjusting his mentality for two months, he got pregnant smoothly without any treatment. How do you think this is a single person's health problem?

Going a step further, reproductive health work at the public level is even further away from the word "individual". You see, various regions are now providing free HPV vaccines to school-age girls, free cancer screenings for migrant women of childbearing age, providing systematic sex education to middle and high school students, and even legislating against non-medically necessary fetal gender identification. These are the core contents of reproductive health work. What is needed is that people of all ages and different backgrounds can enjoy fair reproductive health services and will not be discriminated against because of gender, income, and region. How can this be a goal that can be covered by the health of a single individual?

Of course, there are many voices now who think that expanding the scope of reproductive health too much is not conducive to mass communication. It is better to simplify it into "individual reproductive system health" for better understanding. We who do front-line missionary work can actually understand this idea, but when we are exposed to more cases, we will know that the more simplified the concept, the easier it is for everyone to understand. Ignoring many issues that should be paid attention to - for example, when many girls get gynecological inflammation, their first reaction is to blame themselves, thinking that they have not done a good job in personal hygiene, but they do not know that it may be caused by their partner not doing a good job in cleaning, or even buying substandard menstrual products. These problems cannot be solved by "paying attention to personal health" alone.

To put it bluntly, reproductive health is a bit like the drinking water we usually drink. It is of course important that the water in your own cup is clean, but the safety of the entire water supply system and that everyone can drink safe water are the ultimate pursuit of this concept, and it has never been a matter of a single person.