Kaduna: Traditional leader assures girls, women of access to improved SRHS
District Head, Down Quarters Community in Kaduna South Local Government Area of Kaduna State, Alhaji Danjuma Musa has assured adolescent girls and women of childbearing age of access to sexual and reproductive health services (SRHS) through available legal means to improve their chances of survival.
The traditional father made the commitment when he hosted a team of advocates for reducing barriers to accessing sexual and reproductive health services for women and girls in the community led by the Executive Director, Gender Awareness Trust (GAT), Dr. Lydia Umar.
According to eHealth Africa under its Accelerating Nutrition Results in Nigeria (ANRiN) project, with a population of 10,088,312 and 2,390,929 women of childbearing age, Kaduna state is expected to experience 488,470 pregnancies and 391,095 deliveries in the year 2022.
What this means is that a good number of these pregnancies may occur due to lack or poor access to sexual and reproductive health services which include but are not limited to awareness and access to child spacing methods, withdrawal and abstinence especially by sexually active adolescent girls to prevent them from unplanned pregnancy.
So, traditional leaders like Alhaji Danjuma are expected to work on cultural and religious biases limiting girls and reproductive-age women from having access to health against sexual and reproductive health services irrespective of their social statuses.
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Presenting copies of the advocacy findings by GAT with funding from PathFinder to the district head earlier, Dr. Lydia said for instance that young girls between the ages of 12 to 19 have low knowledge of SRHS and are unable to make informed decisions about their reproductive health.
“Adolescent girls wished that their parents, especially their mothers, were the first to talk to them about sex, for those who did, the adolescent thought that their mothers did not communicate because they were too vague.
“Their attempt to access SRHS at Primary Health Care (PHC) Centres were met with disapproval, hence, they ended up going to chemists or medicine stores to purchase services.
“77 percent of women between 20 to 34 years had minimal knowledge of SHRS while 90 percent are aware of the services and family planning options provided by PHC but only 50 percent access them due to lack of spousal support, lack of funds, harassment from in-laws, culture prohibiting child spacing, preference of services provided by local midwives and traditional birth attendants, religious beliefs and fear of side effects of family planning commodities.
“90 percent of older women between 35 and above have access to SRHS. 80 percent of the women have spousal support but complained of the negative attitude of health workers towards them at the PHC and recommended that health workers should be trained to relate cordially with patients and exhibit unbiased attitudes towards adolescent girls”, she narrated.
SOURCE: Sun News
