Youth Harvest Foundation has trained and supported 31 health workers in 15 communities in Bawku West, Talensi and West Mamprusi of the Upper East and North-East Regions on youth friendly health services.
The initiative according to the Project Officer, Gabriel Ananya seeks to break gender imbalances and create an enabling environment for young people to have access to youth friendly health services at any health facility in their communities.
“Shifting Gender Norms for Improved Maternal and Adolescents Health, (SIMAH) uses gender-transformative approaches to address adolescent girls and boys their sexual, reproductive, and maternal health needs. As in, how these youngsters can access youth-friendly healthcare without facing cultural norms, negative feedback from some nurses and others at the various health facilities. And to achieve this, stakeholders from the educational sector, traditional leaders, and that of the health sector ought to be partnered as the reason for the trained initiative.”
“So, we were very strategic on the training. We make sure that these were nurses working at the various communities and will stay in the communities for a longer period to bring that change that we all wanted. We want to see that the cultural norms as well as the casual attitudes of some nurses towards young people when accessing health services have changed.”
Mr. Ananga who was speaking at a stakeholder engagement on the baseline study of SIMAH held in Bolgatanga noted that the engagement with the stakeholders drawn from various fields was to devise strategies on the best mechanisms and interventions that can be used to achieve youth friendly health services among young people.
“We are sharing with them our findings so that collectively we can all change the narrative of some of these cultural norms that are causing young people not to have a friendly health service regarding their reproductive health and sexual behaviours at the various health facilities.”
He however called on the stakeholders to positively influence the needed change that the project seeks to bring to the young people at various communities regarding their reproductive health needs.
The SIMAH project was funded by the International Development Research Center, Canada and will run for three years in these communities.
Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1 MHz|Moses Apiah|Ghana
