Lesotho develops adolescent health standards
The Ministry of Health in partnership with the UN Agencies conducted a workshop on Adolescents Health Situational Analysis and Development of Adolescents Health Standards in Lesotho which started from the 19th to 24th November 2012 at Khali Hotel in Maseru.
A six day workshop was graced by the Director of Primary Health Care, Dr. Boliake Lugemba, Ms. Shoeshoe Lemphane, the Head of Public Health Nursing Services in the Ministry of Health, Dr. Esther Aceng, TB/HIV Officer from WHO, local and international consultants, technical facilitators from UN Agencies and Ministry of Health, representatives from different groups of youths and health service providers.
Delivering his opening remarks, Dr. Lugemba, the Director of Primary Health Care, welcomed the participants who were present. He explained that the main objective of the workshop was to engage all the stakeholders in particular the health service providers and the youths/adolescents to develop comprehensive standards for adolescent health programs for the betterment of the good health of the adolescents in Lesotho and to great sense of ownership of such services. He indicated that increasing abortions, mental health problems are among other adolescent health problems and more than 20% of the population is adolescent and government made a commitment to provide services to improve the health of this age group as part and parcel to contribute to the vision 2020, Millennium Development Goals and National Development Strategic Plan. He further thanked the consultant Dr. Motlomelo for having conducted this situational analysis.
Ms Shoeshoe, the head of public health nursing services at the Ministry of Health in Lesotho, on the other hand, emphasized that adolescent health is one of the public health concern issues hence the government of the Kingdom of Lesotho is giving it a priority. Ms Lemphane further indicated that the Ministry of Health is committed to improving the provision of adolescent health services at all levels and she asked for active participation of the participants in all the deliberations during the workshop in order for the country to produce a quality document which will promote social networking between the health service providers and the adolescents themselves for easily accessible services.
Dr Esther Aceng, on behalf of World Health Organi-zation (WHO) thanked all those who contributed in developing and defining of standards for adolescent health services; Ministry of Health, international and local consultants from WHO headquarters in Geneva, National University of Lesotho (NUL), and locally based technical facilitators from UN agencies (WHO, UNFPA and UNICEF).
Dr Aceng emphasized that adolescents may be at the same age and are very diverse group due to their different backgrounds in terms of their schooling, socio-economic status, residence (rural/urban) etc. which also needs to be taken into consideration in planning their services and quick action needs to be taken as a lot of adolescent are prematurely due to various preventable causes.
Dr Aceng urged Lesotho to be an example to other countries by being a country with the best adolescent health programs and she pointed that WHO pledged to support the government of Lesotho in improving adolescent health services at its attar most at all levels of the Basotho population.
Dr Motlomelo concluded that data collection tools were adopted from WHO standard instrument and translated into Sesotho for interviews with facility managers, service providers, support staff, village health workers and adolescents themselves. Policy-makers at central level were also interviewed and some focus group discussions was conducted among adolescents and parents.
