A group, Women Friendly Initiative (WFI) has appealed to government at all levels to engage and train health service providers on Adolescents and Youth Friendly Health Services (AYFHS) to encourage young persons to access medication when the need arises.
This is even as the chief executive officer, WFI, Dr Francis Eremutha advocated for the creation of a budget line for AYFHS to enhance youths and adolescent access to health care services for a healthy generation.
He made the appeal in an interview with LEADERSHIP during a three-day training of journalists from l5 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). He said the creation of a budget line and training of health care providers will go a long way in addressing the health needs of youths and adolescents.
The CEO lamented the unprofessional attitudes of some health care providers whom he said are making most youths and adolescents shy away from accessing medication, adding that most of them die in silence.
According to him, this programme which is funded by USAID is also aimed at Strengthening Civic Advocacy for Local Engagements in Nigeria (SCALE ) and it will as well boost journalists capacities to interrogate government policies relating to adolescents health services and nutritional plan for the development of the health sector.
“We believe that the media will help us tell the stories and reveal the challenges of what we are addressing, as we promote the implementation of the policies across the states where we are working, which includes Plateau, Benue, Nasarawa, Kwara, Ebonyi and FCT to share the expectations of what they were supposed to achieve and level of implementation in the affected state,” he said.
In the area of nutrition, the CEO WFI lamented how herders/farmers clashes, climate change and other associated challenges with food production and agriculture development has brought Nigerians to a standstill in terms of balanced diet.
“We are promoting this nutritional policy in such a way that it will allow home gardening that will allow people to use the little land at the backyard to plant what will give them a balance diet,” he said.
In separate presentations, the programme manager WFI-SSCALE Project, Paul Aondofa and the monitoring and evaluation officer, Rosemary Adejo-Adaji called on media practitioners to be actively involved in bringing to public domain the issues affecting adolescents and young persons for proper attention so as to save the incoming generations.
