Youth Advocates, a Zimbabwe-based youth-led organisation and the Ministry of Health, have embarked on a campaign to drive urgent policy change to improve Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) rights.
This comes after noting limited access to SRH services among adolescents in Malawi and across the East and Southern Africa leading to rising teenage pregnancies and child marriages.
The campaign dubbed ‘Step Up for Access’, is mobilising policymakers, religious and traditional leaders, parents, youth and the media to push for legal reforms to ensure that young people, especially those under 18, can access confidential SRH services without parental consent.
Executive Director for Youth Advocates, Tatenda Songore, says Malawi needs to align its laws and policies to address the issue of the age of consent to access SRH services.
“We have seen that a lot of young people are sexually active at a very early age. So should we offer them access to services after they have already faced the consequences of teenage pregnancies, or should we ensure that we prevent teenage pregnancies before it happens?” Songore questioned.
Deputy Director for Reproductive Health in the Ministry of Health responsible for Adolescents and Young people, Hans Katengeza, said government has put in place strategies that ensure every youth has access to appropriate SRH services from all health facilities.
Katengeza said the Step Up for Access project is complementing the government’s approaches in expanding access to SRH services especially in rural areas where the problem of teenage pregnancies is high.
The campaign is being implemented by Youth Advocates in collaboration with the Ministry of Health in Kenya, Malawi, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe with funding from HIVOS under it’s SRHR Fund.
