Mozambican government wants all secondary schools supplying contraceptives by 2021

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Mozambican government wants all secondary schools supplying contraceptives by 2021

6:34 CAT | 06 Sep 2017

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The Mozambican government wants all secondary schools in the country to provide contraceptives by 2021, as a measure to prevent unwanted pregnancies and promote family planning, the Mozambican Ministry of Health has told Lusa.

“We would like, by the end of 2021, to have between 90 percent and 100 percent of secondary schools offering contraception,” the head of Women’s and Children’s Health Department at the Ministry of Health, Páscoa Wate, said.

Without referring to the type of contraceptives that will be made available, Wate said that the main message would be about abstinence, with contraceptives as a last resort.

“The message is abstinence, abstinence, and abstinence, but if there is no abstinence, methods will be available to prevent them from getting pregnant very early,” she said.

Like condom distribution campaigns, seen by some as an incentive to indulge in sex, the distribution of contraceptives in schools may be badly received, Wate noted, but it would be worth it for the results.

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“One of the things we have to start looking at is how are we going to work with parents, caregivers and educators, because our teens and young people have access to information but cannot filter it,” Wate said.

Wate said that it was necessary to correct the notion that family planning concerned only women, and involve men too.

“Boys must understand that if they have children very young, they will be forced to leave school to care for the child, compromising their future,” she said.

In her interview with Lusa, Wate pointed to a 2015 survey which found that in Mozambique only 25.3 percent of women of childbearing age (aged 15-49) had used any form of contraception that year, compared to rates above 70 percent in richer countries.

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Wate said that the exclusion of most Mozambican women from modern methods of contraception was due to a multiplicity of factors, including insufficient coverage of health services and sociocultural reasons.

“Our health network, in fact, still does not cover the population to a desirable degree. There are people who have to walk four to five hours, to reach a health post” she said.

The Department of Women’s and Children’s Health wants 35 percent of women of childbearing age to use contraceptives by 2020. “Success in family planning programs is crucial to birth control and demographic pressure in the country,” she noted.

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Source: Lusa