Young people’s sexual and reproductive health in Nigeria
The Nigerian youth has been bewildered with a lot of developmental issues in recent times. Although Youths/adolescent are generally considered physically healthy they are vulnerable to several unique health problems, such as early child bearing and unwanted pregnancies with its consequences. Others include higher maternal and child mortality, unsafe abortion, sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS, […]
The Nigerian youth has been bewildered with a lot of developmental issues in recent times. Although Youths/adolescent are generally considered physically healthy they are vulnerable to several unique health problems, such as early child bearing and unwanted pregnancies with its consequences. Others include higher maternal and child mortality, unsafe abortion, sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS, and sexual exploitation and abuse. According to the 2003 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS), more than 25 percent of teenage women in Nigeria have began child bearing, 30 percent of rural women aged 15-19 compared with 17% of urban women.
A survey conducted in 2006 also showed that young people contribute 55 percent of the 760,000 unsafe abortion taking place annually in Nigeria. The lack of accurate information and limited access to adolescent-friendly health services are major contributory factors to the poor reproductive health status of young people in Nigeria. The Nigerian youth lacks the basic tools for development and growth. The education and health sector, which is a vital part of the development, is not living up to expectation because funding has grossly been inadequate. Just recently, monies from the education and health budgetary allocation in the FCT were removed to build roads. This is an ABUSE! Building roads might be a necessity but not justifiable to remove money from a critical sector like that considering the state of these sectors. The challenges are limitless. International agencies like the EU, USAID, DFID, and PACKARD, have come into the country with funding for different programmes of intervention to militate against these various challenges. It is true that these interventions are ongoing but the entire funding are also time bound and minute. It is said that the entire funds from all the foreign agencies is about 1 percent of our GDP. The question is, what is our commitment as a government? Sustainable growth and development requires sustained commitment and funding of interventions.
It is not enough to provide an enabling environment but for government to commit herself to allocate funding in the sectors’ budgetary allocations. It is true that government, with various stakeholders, has worked to revise the National Policy on Health and Development of Adolescent and Young People, and a commensurate strategic framework which has not been funded. Various projects for intervention are starting and a lot has come to an end as a result of inadequate funding from sponsors. It is true we have several challenges facing adolescents and youth as concerns sexual and reproductive health, it is also true that there several intervention ongoing, but the truth is there has been very minimal funding for these purpose.
Tope Fashola, Youth Advocate Group, Education as a Vaccine against AIDS, [email protected]