Luapula province senior nursing officer in charge of adolescent health, Patricia Njowe also revealed that the HIV prevalence rate among adolescents in the district, and province as a whole, now stands at 1.6 percent, representing a slight reduction from 1.8 percent 2021.
Speaking in an interview here, recently, Ms Njowe said Mansa district is one of the districts that have shown a downward trajectory in terms of teenage pregnancies.
“To improve this picture further, the district has embarked on conducting quality improvement projects to reduce teenage pregnancies in selected zones. The outcome of this intervention can only be appreciated by mid-year of 2024 after monitoring and evaluation of the said projects,” she said. “All facilities in the district have adolescent health focal point persons coordinating adolescent health services and we have been conducting community dialogues with gatekeepers such as the traditional and religious leaders and others to promote adolescent health.”
Ms Njowe however notes that even though most parents may not allow their child to access family planning services during adolescence, they engage gatekeepers to enable those that are sexually active to be linked to adolescent health spaces where they can get more information on teenage pregnancies and its effects.
“Access to family planning or contraception is one of the rights of women in the childbearing age. Adolescents access this service through counselling and allowing them to make informed decisions on when to have children and how many to have,” she said.
Meanwhile, Luapula province deputy permanent secretary, Prudence Chinyama has challenged the media to highlight the milestones that her government has achieved within its two years of being in power.
Speaking in an interview here recently, Ms Chinyama attributed the drop in teenage pregnancies and early marriages to conducive policies that the government has put in place.
“There is the issue of free education which has come on board, the classrooms are full. The province, like any other place, is a construction site, increasing the school infrastructure, manufacturing desks and a lot of rehabilitation,” she said. “There is actually quite a lot that we have been doing to make sure that these numbers come down and stay down.”
She said the Government has been working with a number of Non Governmental Organisations, Civil Society Organisations and also cooperating partners such as the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) to combat the vice through sensitisation and emphasising on the importance of education and keeping girls in school.
“...Partners can only come on board if they see the step that you are doing and they buy into it. So, we have seen a lot of cooperating partners buy into the idea and policies of the government that speak to the improvement of the education standards, quality of education and also enrollment,” she said. “You, the media therefore, need to come on board and talk about these things. People will only appreciate things that they hear and see, you can do a good thing, but as long as you do not talk about it, it will go quiet and people will take it that the government is not working.”
This article was also published in the Zambia Daily Mail newspaper edition of *****.
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