DOVENET seeks media support to drive youth-friendly SRHR at Ebonyi PHCs

Daughters of Virtue Empowerment Initiative (DOVENET) is pushing to embed sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and communicable disease services for adolescents and young people into primary health centres across Ebonyi.

 

At a media parley in Abakaliki on Friday, March 20, the group flagged persistent PHC gaps—fragmented care, weak referrals, stigma, poor integration, few youth-friendly services, and weak community–facility linkages—that limit access for adolescents, women and vulnerable groups.

 

Representing Executive Director Ugo Nnachi, Monitoring and Evaluation Officer Peter Ewa said DOVENET, with Jhpiego, is running the “Advancing Integrated Health Services Including Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) and Communicable Diseases (CD) Intervention” project. Its goal, he noted, is “to close the gaps and ensure improved, equitable access to integrated, people-centred, youth-friendly SRHR and communicable disease services at community and PHC levels through strengthened systems, partnerships, and service through non-discriminatory delivery models.”

 

Ewa advocated an integrated PHC model that merges family planning, maternal health, adolescent SRHR, GBV prevention/response, cervical cancer awareness and postpartum male engagement with services for malaria, HIV, TB, STIs and viral hepatitis, backed by stronger referrals, data quality, supportive supervision, demand creation and facility mentoring.

 

“This integrated approach ensures that clients receive comprehensive, coordinated, and dignified care across services, rather than fragmented interventions, while promoting sustainability through local ownership,” he said.

 

He urged the media to champion inclusive, youth-friendly care, warning: “We can’t continue to pretend. Our adolescents and other young people in our communities are now more exposed and vulnerable, and if we shy away from offering them the right reproductive health services in a formal facility with the right and friendly environment and expertise, they may become prey to quacks or fall into undesirable experiences that may jeopardize their future.”

 

DOVENET is an Ebonyi-based non-profit focused on empowering women and young people through advocacy, training, capacity building and empowerment.