adminCharmaine Brown Herald Reporter
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) is working with various education institutions in the country to ensure that students have access to information on sexual reproductive health (SRH), HIV and gender based violence.
Speaking during a UNFPA consultative workshop with young people in Harare, UNFPA programme analyst Mrs Pennelope Kasere said such information will go a long way in reducing teenage fertility rates.
“As UNFPA we have made lot of investment in trying to make sure that young people have access to information to make those decisions, we have contributed to the curriculum review process so that our learners have updated information which relates to their growing up, the decisions they make,” she said.
“We are also working in tertiary institutions where we are trying to make sure that students in tertiary institutions have access to information on SRH, HIV and GBV services and we are also supported by the Ministry of Health and Child Care to develop guidelines on comprehensive sexuality education for out of school young people.”
Mrs Kasere said teenage pregnancies were still high in Zimbabwe.
“The year 2019 marks 25 years of commitment to the implementation of the International Conference on Population and Development Programme of Action which represents a promise made to young people that their rights and their needs would be met,” she said.
“Our teenage fertility rates are still high and more work needs to be done as a way of ensuring that young people are really empowered in making informed decisions that will enable them to realise their full potential.”
According to the National Adolescent Sexual Reproductive Health Strategy II 2016-2020, the key challenges facing adolescents and young people in Zimbabwe are high rates of unplanned pregnancies, early childbearing, adolescent marriages, gender based violence, high maternal mortality and high rates of new HIV infection.
Online Reporter