By YOLANDA Z. SOTELO
MEN, by and large, can be so protective of their “manhood” that even the women could not convince the menfolk in their villages to undergo voluntary surgical sterilization (VSS).

There are 1,897 Barangay Service Point Officers (BSPOs), almost all of them women, who are volunteer workers of the population program in Pangasinan which has 1,333 villages.

According to records of the Provincial Population Office (PPO), there are villages with two or more BSPOs while some BSPOs cover two or more villages.

Governor Victor Agbayani called the BSPOs the “soldiers of the population program” as they are able to religiously perform their duties as volunteer worker, including helping many women undergo bilateral tubal ligation (BTL).

But the BSPOs have a common frustration: Their inability to persuade villagemates to undergo male sterilization.

Josephine Lacambra, this year’s most outstanding BSPO in the province awarded by the provincial government, said during her seven years as a BSPO, she was able to convince 22 women in Bantayan village to undergo BTL but not one man to undergo sterilization. (A total of 48 women in the village have been ligated).

Lacambra underwent trainings on vasectomy and she used the knowledge to encourage the menfolk in the village to undergo the procedure, but to no avail.

There is only one man in the entire town of Mangaldan who had been sterilized. “We solicited the help of the man to help us convince other men to undergo the procedure, but we merely got laughed at,” she said.

Even her own husband was resolute in not going through the process, she said.

Cheryl Sagana, the second most outstanding BSPO, has the same predicament in her village, Boboy, in Agno town.

“It is really difficult to convince the men. They throw the responsibility of planning the number of children to the women. They said the wife can just take the pills,” she lamented.

The most common reason why the men refuse to undergo sterilization is that the procedure would supposedly minimize their manhood.

“We tell them it’s not true, but they are just obstinate,” Sagana said.

The men in Vacante village in Binalonan are convinced that the use of contraceptives was good to plan the number of children, according to Leonida Farnacio, the BSPO in the village.

“But they don’t like vasectomy. They said it should be the women who should be in charge of planning the family,” Farnacio said. Last year, five women underwent tubal ligation in the village, but not one man underwent sterilization.

Pills remain the choice contraceptive in Pangasinan. But with the withdrawal of the commodity assistance by the United States Agency for International Development, the provincial government has embarked on contraceptive self-reliance (CSR).

Agbayani said the Pangasinan experience on CSR has been adopted by the Department of Health as a model in the country and was shared with different countries during the 33 annual international conference on global health last June. (Read more of me at http://myworld.prepys.com