Question NW2060 to the Minister of Health

Reply:

The Department of Health has several initiatives to assist young people to access contraceptive and family planning services.

-  Ensuring that all primary health care facilities are adolescent and youth friendly. Facilities that are classified as youth friendly need the following standards:

• Policies and processes to support adolescent and youth health rights available;
• Provision of safe and supportive environment;
• Systems to train and develop staff on youth issues;
• Individualised care with privacy and confidentiality maintained; and
• Effective referral systems in place.

The Department has contracted and NGO (loveLife) to assist with the training of clinic personnel and to ensure that standards listed above are in place. We have trained 615 health professionals during the past year and will be training an additional 375 during this financial year.

• An effort to increase condom use among the youth in particular, the Department has decided to procure coloured and scented male condoms. A contract to supply 50 million coloured and scented condoms has been awarded and 38 million have already been distributed in universities and TVET colleges. The distribution of these condoms is a partnership between the Departments of Higher Education and Training and of Health – the ‘First Things First’ campaign for institutions of higher learning – which has been implemented on an annual basis since 2011. The aim of this campaign is to offer HIV counselling and testing, Medical Male Circumcision (MMC), TB screening, condom distribution, appropriate prevention messages and treatment referrals to the students in Universities and TVETs. Condoms are also distributed during HCT as dual protection against unplanned pregnancies, STIs and HIV. Over 100 000 students were reached in the last financial year;
• In order to expand the range of contraceptive commodities available the Department introduced the sub-dermal implant in April 2014 and to date more than 850,000 women have had the implant inserted. Although the implant method was not specifically targeted at the youth, earlier indications seem to be showing that the majority of the 850 000 women are actually young people who have never been on any contraception before;

• In collaboration with Soul City, the Society for Family Health and Stellenbosch University and funding from a development partner, the Department is implementing the ‘Families Matter’ project whose objective is to prepare youth to make informed health choices, including sexual and reproductive health choices. The project is currently running in Gauteng, KwaZulu Natal, Free State, Mpumalanga, Northern Cape and Western Cape;

• With funding from the Department of Health and Global Fund, Soul City is implementing the Rise Women’s clubs (the clubs target young women between 15-24 years of age with health education messages and has currently reached 17,000 young women through 1 000 Rise Young Women’s clubs) and Soul Buddies clubs (to empower primary school children to make healthy life choices). In addition, the Department of Health funds loveLife’s ground breakers programme which is a peer-to-peer programme that focuses on learners in high school and out of school and empowers them to make healthy life choices;

• As part of the Integrated School Health Programme (which is a collaborative programme between the Departments of Health and of Basic Education), school health teams provide age-appropriate messages and information to learners in both primary and secondary schools.

END.