Civil society organisations promoting adolescent and youth reproductive health rights in Kwara State have urged the state government to establish technical working group on adolescent and youth friendly health services (AYFHS) in all the 193 wards.
The CSOs also charged the state government to create a specific budget line for AYFHS, representative of Novel Association for Youth Advocacy (NAYA) in the state, Ms Oluwatoni Adeleke has said.
She said that actions that are backed by finances are still needed by the state government to ensure a dedicated, sustainable funding to meet young people’s contraceptive needs.
Ms Adeleke hinted that adolescents are likely to take uninformed decisions about their reproductive health issues when there was no place established for them to get expert advice.
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“In a situation whereby these adolescents, especially female students in our rural communities, do not have specific and designated access to reproductive health centres with trained health care providers, they resort to using herbal concoction, illicit drugs or even hanger to remove pregnancy for fear of being scolded.
The NAYA official, who lamented that young people in the country lack access to sexual and reproductive health, including family planning, that are tailored their needs, said that the Kwara state government should integrate adolescent and youth health friendly services to primary healthcare centres in all the 193 wards across the 16 local government areas in the state.
Adeleke, who is also the CEO of the Olive Community Development Initiative, a nongovernmental group concerned with adolescent reproductive matters, urged the government to build capacity of at least one healthcare provider on adolescent sexual and reproductive health rights.
In a remark, Desk Officer, Kwara state ministry of Health, Mrs. Omolade Gabi, said that the state government already has four centres for adolescent health matters in form of referral centres at secondary health facilities at Adewole, Oja Gboro, specialist hospital, Offa and Kwara state Polytechnic, Ilorin with service providers.
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