Federal Government says adolescents constitute a significant proportion of women of reproductive age group contributing almost 40 per cent of maternal burden in Nigeria.
It said it has reposition Reproductive Maternal Newborn Adolescent Elderly Health plus Nutrition(RMNCAEH+N) to reduce maternal and child mortality and morbidity in the country.
Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire at the 1st African and 2nd Nigeria Adolescent Health and Development conference organised by the Society for Adolescent and Young Peoples’ Health in Nigeria (SAYPHIN) emphasised the government’s commitments to the global, regional and national agenda on adolescent health optimise investments in adolescent health and wellbeing in Africa.
The theme of the event is “Fulfilling Promises: Optimising Investment in Africa.”
Ehanire who was represented by the Director of Family Health, Dr Anas Kolo explained that with the campaign promises of the current administration, the national aspiration is to invest in the health and wellbeing of adolescents and young people.
“This administration believes that this is key to achieving SDGs and demographic dividends. With adolescents comprising about 16 per cent of the global population, and 23 per cent of the population of Sub-Saharan Africa, and a little above 20 per cent of the Nigerian population.
“It is quite clear that investing in this target group will fuel economic growth resulting in increased productivity, decreased health expenditures and the interruption of intergeneration transmission of poor health, poverty and discrimination among others.”
Ehanire further explained that as part of the government’s mandate towards the realisation of the vision, it has repositioned its efforts to better provide strategic leadership, effective coordination, advocacy, resource mobilisation and accountability.
“Consequently, we have among others, revised the national policy on adolescent development and health, translated this policy into an implementation plan and Monitoring and Evaluation(M&E) framework.”
“We have an established National Technical Working Group (TWG) on the health and development of adolescents and young people. We are currently working towards repositioning the technical working group in line with current realities to provide a coordinated platform to drive one national adolescent program which will be replicated at subnational levels.
Ehanire further stated that in accordance with Nigeria’s Health Sector Vision to achieve Universal Health Coverage ‘leaving no one behind,’ the government is aware of the need to improve service delivery which should be guided by laws and policies of quality Adolescent and youth-friendly services that will provide enabling environment for the operationalisation at subnational levels.
“In addition, we are committed to strengthening governance through meaningful engagement of adolescents to initiate action and influence decisions through greater engagement of youth-led NGO’s and Youth NGO’s.”
Also speaking on behalf of Adolescents, a 13-year-old participant, Isabel Anani in her speech emphasized that investment in adolescent health and wellbeing will not only transform the lives of boys and girls in Africa but will also generate economic returns, especially in low-income countries.
Anani also stated that the cost of inactions in this regard are too great to ignore as adolescent face unprecedented social economic and cultural change.
According to her, “We must transform our health, education, family support and legal system to keep with change as failure to invest in the health and wellbeing of the adolescent will jeopardise earlier investment in maternal and child health, erodes future quality and length of life and escalates suffering inequality and social instability.
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