The Malawi Sexual Reproductive Health Alliance says it is geared to provide sexual and reproductive health services to the youth in the country.

The alliance’s national programs coordinator, Hastings Saka, told YFM that youth’s access to sexual reproductive health and rights is still limited.

Saka said this remains a huge challenge despite several interventions that are currently underway.

He highlighted that long distances to access the services, lack of adequate resources to reach to the young people in the hard to reach areas, lack of expertize and skills among health practitioners who deliver the services, lack of knowledge on available services among young people and lack of zeal among some stakeholders are some of the major contributing factors to the problem.

However, Saka was quick to point out that the alliance has put in place a number of initiatives to reach out to young people with the services.

“As an alliance we know that ignorance on the SRH&R results into early pregnancies, unsafe abortions and sexually transmitted infections, hence we have come up with some interventions which will help us to reach out to these young people.

“Among others we intend to train more health personnel on the standards and strategy of service delivery, empower youth to hold duty bearers accountable and encourage them to have safe sex,” Saka said.

He added that they are currently lobbying for funds from government to conduct awareness campaigns on the same.