Symposium reflects on sexual reproductive health rights
Mompati Tlhankane | Friday May 27, 2022 16:52
The symposium acted as a closeout session for the 2gether 4 SRHR Programme, which is an initiative that was started on October 1, 2017 with an initial end date of December 31, 2021, but was extended to end of June 2022.
The programme is funded by the government of Sweden and aims to improve the SRHR for all people in East and Southern Africa (ESA), particularly adolescent girls and key populations.
Amongst others, the symposium discussed models and approaches that were applied to strengthen SRHR outcomes in various districts and sites, identify lessons that were learnt and how these can be replicated or scaled-up in other areas.
Speaking at the symposium, Ministry of Health’s permanent secretary, Grace Muzila said the 2gether 4 SRHR programme has had a remarkable success in empowering people to be able to exercise their sexual and reproductive rights. She indicated that it has also helped Botswana’s health system to adopt an integrated health services delivery approach that will ultimately see more people having access to various health services.
“As a country that still has challenges of HIV and gender-based violence (GBV) including sexual gender-based violence (SGBV), this programme has come in handy in ensuring that more people are educated about GBV and SGBV. Many people across the participating districts were not only reached, educated about GBV and SRHR, but also empowered on how they can protect themselves and those around them. The community in its various strata was engaged and empowered. Women and children in particular, including teenage and adolescent girls, were empowered on their SRH rights,” Muzila revealed.
She disclosed that the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic did not disrupt their vigour and dedication to have this programme succeed. Muzila said in fact, COVID-19 helped them to come up with more innovative measures in which they could continue providing health services to people in spite of all the restrictions that the pandemic placed on them.
“Given the lessons learnt, it is our belief that we should consolidate and strengthen achievements made in the 10 districts that participated during the first phase of the programme. We believe that we should also use the lessons learnt to expand the programme to the remaining eight District Health Management Teams (DHMTs), so that they can also be empowered and equally enjoy improved integrated health services,” she further said.
Giving the overview of the SRHR, HIV and SGBV integration scale up, SRH/HIV linkages coordinator Kesaobaka Dikgole pointed out that the integration of SRH, HIV and GBV has the potential to address common challenges resulting in public health benefits and removal of access barriers of patients to essential service.
Dikgole said the goal was to institutionalise linkages and integration of client-centred SRHR, HIV, GBV, and other services, as a national approach to synergistically address health challenges within the context of a primary health care approach.
She said rapid assessments undertaken in 2011 and 2018 on the status of SRHR, HIV and GBV integration revealed that there was weak policy environment at the national level, not supportive of service integration amongst others.
Dikgole said amongst the lessons leant was the sensitisation of GBV Case Community Workers and GBV Shelter staff on FP clarified misconceptions that hinder women from accessing family planning and capacitated the cadres to meaningfully engage community members and survivors of GBV from a sound knowledge base.
For his part Interim head of Botswana UNFPA Country Office, Innocent Modisaotsile said as the UN agency responsible for Sexual and Reproductive Health they are delighted that the symposium was dedicated to reflecting on the journey they have had together to promote SRHR for all.
“It will be very remiss of me not to pay special tribute to the Government of Sweden for its financial support to advance SRHR to all populations. The government of Sweden has demonstrated unquestionable commitment to supporting the SRHR agenda. Five years ago, it provided financial support to four UN agencies to co-create a programme that is centred on promoting sexual and reproductive health and rights for people in East and Southern Africa. This is commonly referred to as 2gether4 SRH, symbolising one UN voice in creating an enabling environment for accessing SRHR for all, in particular, the adolescent girls, young people and key populations,” he further said.
Modisaotsile added that what they intended to achieve with this joint initiative was to create an enabling legal and policy environment for attainment of SRHR by all people. He said the intention was to also accelerate and scale-up client centred quality integrated services for SRHR and SGBV services and to empower all people to exercise their SRH rights, adopt protective and promotive behaviours, and access quality integrated services.