By Kenneth C. Mkandawire
Livingstonia Synod has intensified efforts towards promoting sexual reproductive health and rights of the youths in Mzimba through a project that distribute short-term family planning methods.
The Synod’s department of health is implementing a € 282, 000 which is approximately 252 Million Malawi Kwacha, Sexual reproductive health program called “N’zatonse” funded by the German Bank (KFW) through Population Services International (PSI) Malawi in partnership with Act Alliance.
The Synod’s Project Officer for Mzimba North, Clement Nthakomwa, said on Tuesday that the phase 4 of the program aims at reaching out to the youths with quality information and quality services by encouraging them to come forward and access the health facilities conveniently.
“The goal of the project is that we reach out to young people by making them aware of their sexual reproductive health and rights and also creating a favourable environment of accessing sexual health reproductive services.” He said in an interview.
Nthakomwa further said so far, they have among other activities conducted mentorship for Community Based Distributor Agents (CBDA) also known as the Community Referral Agents (CRA) in Mzimba North, whose core responsibility is to distribute the short-term family planning methods in various communities where this project is being implemented.
“For this particular time, we have met with 67 active CRAs from the areas of Ekwendeni, Enukweni, Dunduzu, Ngóngo, Embombeni and Baula who are coordinating stakeholders located in the communities to provide sexual reproductive health services in the short-term family planning methods.”
“As a project, we are also using these agents by giving them the capacity to make referrals for other sexual reproductive health services that the sexually active youths around the communities can find in hospitals and other service providers like the police and Social Welfare.”
Commenting on the matter, a CBDA from Enukweni Ronnex Kamanga hailed the authority for facilitating the project during the activities that were recently held, pointing out that they are going to be committed in doing the job by clarifying to their clients the services which they did not know in the past for smooth coordination and positive results.
Said Kamanga, “We are going to step up our approach in terms of mobilizing the people round the communities through door to door and social gatherings among other strategies, we are probably going to reach out to many youths and their reproductive health is hopefully going to be improved.”
N’zatonse project which is now in phase 4 started in April 2021 and will run up to June 2023.
Photo: Part of the mentorship sessions for CRAs at Enukweni.
