Youths in Mchinji and Mangochi districts  are expected to benefit a lot from the Youth Community Based Distributing Agents (YCBDA’s)  which Youth Net and Counseling (YONECO) is training on family planning methods.

The intense training which YONECO has organised under the More Than Brides (MTB) project for a period of 21 days will see at least 31 youth’s being trained on administration of family planning methods.

In an interview with YFM online, Director of Reproductive Health Services in the Ministry of Health, Fannie Kachale said it is important for various stakeholders to take part in easing access to Sexual Reproductive Health (SRH) services to the youth.

The 2015, 2016 demographic health survey which the ministry conducted found that at least 29 percent of girls get pregnant every year.

According to Kachale, most young people do not take up family planning methods because of myths surrounding them.

“A lot of youth’s are fed wrong information regarding contraceptives therefore it is important to give them right information so that they should be able to make better choices on the contraceptive methods which they would like to use”.

She also talked of some policies especially in the academic set up which have an impact on the uptake of family planning methods.

“School policies do not allow stakeholders to provide family planning methods, but most of our youthful learners are sexually active, so one way of reaching out to them is by using the YCBDA’s.”

In his remarks MTB country alliance coordinator Kasuzi Mbaluko admitted that access to SRH services for the youth is marred by alot of challenges.

“Some health centres are very far from where these young people live and it is quite costly for them to travel and access SRH services, which is why most girls are at risk of getting pregnant and this forces them to drop out of school.”

YONECO is implementing the MTB project for five years.