By Mariam Namakula
In march 2019, Uganda had a last ditch effort on the sexual reproductive health rights campaigns and actions thrown back to her face. The recording of her first ever Covid-19 case fine-tuned the already worse situation and poised its fair share in disrupting especially the Sexual Reproductive Health Rights (SRHR) of many young people.
With over 300000 teenage pregnancies and ranking highest in most parts of the world, the country was left in a dilemma of whether to focus on the pandemic or rethink of strategies that seemed to have nurtured a much worse pandemic.
The total shutdowns, road blocks, curfew even in areas that lagged behind in terms of medical facilities or even supplies would rather be looked up to as pick up lessons in the readily anticipated post season.
However, characterized with the most recent paternity wave, the post Covid-19 era has proved and exposed yet another pandemic in the violation of rights and services around reproductive health.
Despite the fact that there have been numerous programs geared at sensitizing especially the majority young population about their reproductive health, the journey towards to unearthing the so many myths around SRHR has remained slumping but also daring in the country.
Sexual Reproductive Health for instance could be defined to include issues among others adolescents health, infertility, prevention and management of unsafe abortion, reproductive health tract infections including STI / HIV/AIDS, reproductive organ cancers however, continued to be redefined to simply spell out family planning, maternal health or even issues to deal with femininity alone.
Florence Nabukenya the Public Health Ambassador Uganda (PHAU), argues that the greatest challenge thus arises from the lack of access to quality information especially that much of it is being churned down via internet where youngest people consume as gospel truth.
With all the misconception thrown around and safe spaces increasingly shrinking down, Nabukenya says there is no room for especially the young people to share or even access credible information from the authentic sources.
Currently Uganda is placed 16th among the countries with the highest number of teenage pregnancies with over 1000 cases registered daily and the Lango sub- region accounting for 28% while Oyam district taking the lead with over 4,448 cases all together according to a 2021 UNICEF report. The vulnerability especially by the adolescent girls and young women to these circumstances thus explains why most developmental partners and other stakeholders still see it paramount to first solve the gender equity issues rather than starting to take on a collective approach.
Discussions around the need to have a transition however remain pivotal especially that there is need to harness better health for young people through a multi sectoral approach.
Haruna Musa an SRHR Communication Specialist at the Uganda Youth Adolescents Health Forum notes that having partnership remains one of the key things that different stake holders needed to build, focusing on who does what, in what area and then come together.
According to the specialist, understanding where the problem is, who dubs as the major challenge in the problem and a collective discussion held around the issue to gather comprehensive resolutions and recommendations towards addressing the challenges that young people face including adolescent girls and young women.
“Having male engaging organizations like the Male Engage Uganda, Male Engage Alliance , Male Engage Africa deliberately establish partnerships with organizations that are more female centered in terms of SRHR and ensure that they work in the same lane,” Musa noted.
Adding that this will bring wealth of expertise in different areas and they will look at how they involve boys in given activities where females are also involved. For Musa, working as isolated agents may prove a lot of work especially that different stake holders contribute differently for example a parent might easily take on a leadership role in the family while a health worker could come handy in providing health reproductive information but also services to the young people.
The challenge however according to Florence remains access to SRH services especially for those in rural areas as many drug stocks discourage the young people from continuously going to health centers for authentic health care support especially family planning methods.
The situation however is no different from most cultural and religious values and restriction that contemplate on the how and why SRHR continue to be a priority. A lot of communities are still faced with resistance as many are rooted in their cultural beliefs and values and don’t want to adopt new norms and what is needed at the time. “You have seen activities flop in some areas due to the negative attitudes of leaders who are basically male and because they are attached to some culture and have their values,” Musa recalled.
Arguing that there needed to be an inter-generational dialogue were young people inter faced with the other key stake holders including different leaders of the communities, male and female to discuss these issues together and come up with a solution collectively.
Uganda unlike other countries also faced with a similar challenge is not short of policies to support the key aspects of SRH and if implemented could held guide in how every stake holder could become a support system towards the sector.
A follow up strategy or mechanism in that case remains a big issue to see to it that these policies are implemented.
And while there is no specific policy that speaks to men alone about SRHR issues, the debate will always be a universal challenge speaking to the different sexual reproductive health right challenges only putting the females at the forefront due to the gaps in women empowerment and gender equality.
Policies like the National Policy Guidelines For Sexual Reproductive Health Services 2006, thus need to take a center role through sensitization and finding ways of penetrating to the deepest organs even at the grass root levels to create awareness especially that these issues are still appreciated by a few elites.
