Government to spend more on reproductive health services

Government plans to increase its health budget as a strategy to improve sexual and reproductive health services in the country, Zimbabwe's New Ziana reported.

This follows findings that the country's population faces challenges to access reproductive health services.

The strategy includes removing user fees for family planning by 2013 and targeting adolescents for family planning services.

Health and Child Welfare principal director Gibson Mhlanga said the government is in the process of reviewing health policies and strategies.

"Our goal is to strengthen access to and utilisation of quality family planning services by targeting vulnerable groups and hard-to-reach communities to reduce the unmet need for family planning from 13 percent to 6.5 percent, and to increase contraceptive prevalence rate from 59 percent to 68 percent," he said.

To attain this the government will strive to increase its health budget to support family planning services, including the procurement of contraceptive commodities from the current 1.7 percent to 3 percent.

Mhlanga said this would avert an estimated 780,000 unplanned pregnancies, 110,500 unsafe abortions and 4,200 maternal deaths by 2020.

National coordinator of Zimbabwe Young People's Network Yemurai Nyoni said young people in particular women aged between 15 and 19 faced difficulties in accessing contraceptives and family planning services despite more than 40 percent of them having been sexually active before the age of 18.

Youths in rural areas are most at risk as they do not have access to contraceptives.

The current rate of contraceptive use among married Zimbabweans stands at 57 percent and the unmet need for contraceptives has stagnated at 13 percent since 1999.