Sexual and reproductive health and rights Africa Trust SAT has informed that sexual and reproductive health,encompasses all matters including HIV, STIs, contraception, infertility,maternal and neonatal health.
SAT Country Director Lenganji Nanyangwe notes that “Our young people are getting infected every day. We’re supposed to be recording lower prevalence or incidence rates of HIV amongst the young people. It is not so. So we have a real problem in the central province, Chibombo, those areas. Because we work there, we know that STIs is a problem. We have this problem and we can’t keep quiet about it”.
Ms Nanyangwe notes that the country has a very youthful population with over about 60% between the ranges of 10 to 35 and these diseases are concentrated in this population and if accurate information is not disseminated for young people to act upon, the nation will loose a generation.
She has stated that SAT has understood that they cannot do it without the media and without heads of media institutions to disseminate accurate information and reach the intended audience.
“We’re developing the operational plan for this country. And we noticed that they’re not talking about HPV, the human papilloma virus. And yet, cervical cancer is one of the leading cancers that are killing people in this country. So we said, do women know, fellow ladies in here, that actually you can screen for HPV just like you screen for HIV”? She added.
She observed that Women wait until they have survical cancer to know that actually they were carrying this virus, when they can actually know their HPV status 20 years before it develops into survival cancer.
“But this is information that we’re not hearing in the media because we have not looked into these issues and because if we haven’t looked into these issues, how will they be disseminated? She questioned.
She was speaking at media training communication strategy held by SAT.
The SAT country Director stated “I hope we can come up with a good strategy which we can then start to implement and see where we go going forward”.
By Mumba Tailashi
