HACEY, CSOs, Seek Robust Legislation To Tackle Sexual Health Challenges

HACEY Health Initiative, in partnership with Civil Society Organization (CSO), has stressed the need for robust legislation to address sexual health concerns in Nigeria.

They posited that the Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) intervention would address early pregnancy, HIV infections, unsafe abortions, maternal mortality and violence.

HACEY Health, with the support of EmpowerChange, further sought the need to organise a comprehensive capacity-building workshop for the (NextGen SRHR) fellow to build on digital initiatives to amplify the SRHR initiative projects across community-based organization in Lagos, Oyo, Ondo, Ekiti and Osun state adding that the move will address sensitive issues on maternal mortality, teenage pregnancies, family planning amongst others.

It also promises to advance the advocacy of emerging CSOs with digital tools, digital integration, capacity building workshops to improve knowledge on SRHR service delivery.

Recent checks from HACEY revealed that 19 per cent of adolescents and women aged 15-19 had begun child bearing while stressing the need to address early pregnancy and teenage abortions.

Speaking on the side-lines of the workshop event themed; Improving Adolescent and Young People’s Access to rights-based, Inclusive and gender-sensitive SRHR services, chief researcher, Nigeria Medical Research, Dr. Adeshola Z. Musa emphasized the critical role SRHR plays in improving health and wellbeing by addressing issues like child marriage, where young girls are not mentally prepared to start families.

She added that Nigeria faces significant challenges, including high maternal mortality rates at 512 per 100,000 births, limited access to contraception often hindered by lack of support from husbands, and the prevalence of HIV/AIDS.

She urged the Community Based Organization (CBOs) to implement programmes, informed policies to reduce the prevalence of sexual reproductive infections by generating data that will help inform the community members on the increase of high rate of infection, unsafe abortions and maternal mortality in the country.

She lamented that the major challenges of the SRHR programme is funding, discrimination and sociocultural beliefs that affect sexual reproductive health in the country.