Sexual & Reproductive Health & Right (SRHR Education)

Young persons are willing to learn about reproductive health but are facing challenges from the family, health providers, community, and the near lack of institutional support to provide relevant information and services. Girls and young female have a higher prevalence of most reproductive health problems because of lack of information, peer pressure, economic gains, and poor access to services. Oftentimes, adolescents, and young people, engage in high risk sexual behaviours with little information which increases their vulnerability to reproductive health problems as they are more likely to experiment sexually, often with multiple partners without using condoms on a regular basis. The resultant effect is unwanted pregnancy and most of the time, the only option open to the girls and female adolescents is induced abortion and in view of its legal restriction and high cost (where available), they resort to self-help using common everyday items for termination of pregnancy or seek the services of quacks and this exposes them to a lot of risks. There is the need to reach these girls and young females with sexuality and reproductive health and rights information and services, motivate them to change behaviour in the light of new information and awareness, provide more institutional support, and create the social and economic climate, which will make the desired changes possible and sustainable. Over the years, many organizations including GPI have been working to improve adolescent sexual and reproductive health through advocacy and prevention programming. This needs to be deepened and intensified for a sustainable impact. At the policy level, GPI played a critical role in the passage of Nigeria’s national sexuality education curriculum termed Family Life & HIV Education (FLHE), adopted by the Federal Government in 2000.