Integrating Adolescent Health Services into Routine Family Health Days and Exploring Barriers and Facilitators to Effective PMTCT Program Implementation (UNICEF)

Overview

Due to the stigma attached to adolescent sexuality, there are gaps in accessing and providing quality adolescent-friendly reproductive health services (AFRHS) at health facilities. However, at the community level, there is a great potential for integrating, scaling up and sustaining AFRHS, as was discovered during EGPAF’s 2012-2013 United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF)-funded project Scaling up Adolescent Health Services Through Family Health Days- an outreach activity used to reach hard-to-reach areas of Lesotho with necessary diagnostics and treatment. EGPAF, the MOH, and UNICEF collaborated again on another AFRHS project, with the objective to integrate AFRHS into routine rounds of Family Health Days. The project used the first day of each Family Health Day as a special emphasis day for AFRHS. Overall, a total of 3,462 clients were offered HIV testing and counseling and other services at Family Health Days including 1,813 adolescents (52%).  The 127 clients, who tested HIV-positive, including 28 adolescents (1.5%), were enrolled into care at nearby health facilities.