Prioritise girls sexual reproductive health, SFH tasks Nasarawa Government

Society for Family Health (SFH) has urged the Nasarawa state government to prioritise adolescent girls’ access to sexual reproductive health services to reduce morbidity and maternal mortality.

The Northern regional coordinator, SFH, Anita Elabo at the closeout of the first phase of the A360 project yesterday in Lafia, said access to reproductive health services would promote social inclusiveness and help reduce maternal mortality such as unplanned pregnancies and unsafe abortion among adolescent girls and women.

Anita highlighted the achievements of the project to include adolescents and their parents’ engagement in the use of modern contraceptives in the prevention of unwanted pregnancies and birth control. Others include the empowerment of adolescent girls, the creation of adolescent-friendly sexual reproductive health facilities, and easy accessibility. She also called on the state government to upscale safe spaces for adolescent girls for more primary health service facilities.

Director of Public health, Ibrahim Hasan who represented the commissioner of health, Ahmed Yahaya said that the government would adopt replicable components of the A360 programme because of its effectiveness in handling challenges of adolescent’s sexual reproductive health. He assured that they would provide adolescent-friendly facilities for girls to have access to adolescent sexual and reproductive health (ASRH) services.

Absalom Madawa, a director with the state Primary Health Care agency assured increased budgetary allocation to sustain A360 and make it more adolescent-friendly for easy accessibility.

SFH Innovation and Partnership Specialist (IPS) Oyebukola Tomori commended the state government for being the first state in the country to include adolescent sexual health projects in its budget and also creating an enabling environment for the project to thrive. Adebukola explained that one of the challenges of the programme was the backlash from community leaders on the use of contraceptives for unmarried adolescent girls and inadequate contraceptive commodities.