An Assessment of the Impact of Lack of Quality Youth Friendly Health Services

Foster Mafiala, SRHR AFRICA TRUST (SAT)

In 2007 Malawi adopted the Youth Friendly Health Service Strategy (YFHS) to improve the access to sexual reproductive health and rights services(SRHR) among young people from 10-24. Although the YFHS Strategy was adopted, implementation was ineffective with only 31.8% young people having reached with information and 13% having access to the services. YFHS are high-quality services that respond to the general health, especially sexual and reproductive health and rights needs of young people. Furthermore, statistics point that Key and Vulnerable populations i.e. young Men having sex with Men (MSM)and young Female Sex Workers, don't have access to YFHS with several contributing factors; negative provider attitudes, long distances to YFHS access points, and lack of confidentiality as some of the reasons for discontinued use of YFHS. Therefore SAT's Youth hub conducted a project with other partners in four districts to increase access to Quality YFHS among Key and Vulnerable Populations.