By Adeyinka Adeniran
For the third time in a row, the Academy for Health Development (AHEAD) with the support of a United States of America based organisation, Guttmacher Institute have completed the training of another 16 advocates to help in the fight against issues around Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SHRH), especially among women and girls.
The week-long physical training which ended at the weekend, complemented an earlier virtual training sessions that held in July.
The week-long physical training sessions dubbed “Communicating Evidence for SRHR Policy Advocacy and Action” (C4SPAA) Fellowship Cohort 3 – 2024/2025 held at AHEAD office, Sophia Centre, Ile-Ife, Osun state.
According to the organisers, the training was designed to equip participants with advanced skills in communicating evidence for SRHR policy advocacy and action, while also providing a unique opportunity to engage with peers, share experiences, and build lasting networks.
Members of the Cohort 3 who attended the training include: journalists, medical practitioners, youth advocates, social media influencers, researchers, media experts and policy makers among others were selected from Lagos, Oyo, Ogun, Ondo, Ekiti, Bauchi, Yobe, Osun, Anambra, and Abuja.
Vice Chancellor of the first specialized medical health sciences university in Nigeria, University of Health Sciences, Ondo, Adesegun Fatusi said the fight against the menace of unsafe abortion amongst other sexual reproductive health issues must be sustained.
Fatusi is a professor of public health and community medicine and the co-founder of the Academic for Health Development (AHEAD), Ile- Ife, Osun State.
Justifying the fellowship training despite the huge investment, the Don said too much cannot be done in raising experts and professionals to tackle the menace of sexual and reproductive health issues among women and girls in the country.
He said Nigeria has a lot of challenges relating to sexual reproductive health, maternal health, maternal mortality with abortion related issue as central to it all.
He noted that, to change the narrative, when the life of women, mothers, young girls and children are concerned, there is need to raise more champions and advocates from every sector, particularly in view of Nigeria’s large population.
He said despite the fellowship programme, lot more still needs to be done, expressing optimism that more champions and advocates would be trained to help in the fight against Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights (SHRH) especially on the menace of unsafe abortion which he described as a leading silent killer.
Professor Fatusi said, “There is a lot that we need to do. Nigeria has a lot of challenges related to sexual reproductive maternal health, maternal maternity and we know that abortion related issue is central to all of that. Whether you’re talking about the life of our women, mothers or even young women and if you’re going to change the narrative, you need to raise enough champions, Nigeria is a nation with over 200 million people.
“We need to raise hundreds and thousands of champions. So for us what we we have done so far still sounds like a drop in the ocean. However, the great thing is we are not just creating people who will go out and take action. We are creating people who are champions, who will replicate themselves.
“The more we create, the more multiplication we will see, the more impact we will see and the more better Nigeria will become in terms of the health of our young women and mothers. We hope we can do this until we see a change.
“The investment is huge. From every dimension, not just financial, technical and all that goes with that planning. It is important to particularly thank our founder, our supporter, the Guttmacher Institute for believing in this dream and for the continuous investment and our resource persons who we have drawn from all over and the fellows, past fellows who had joined the past programs and current fellows who have left all they need to do, their time, their work, their families to dedicate themselves to this period.
“So, it’s a huge investment, however the investment pail into, I don’t want to say nothing, if you think about the reward that we are seeing, so it’s an investment that will bring a great reward. So if you compare the investment to the benefit ratio. This is one of the best investments we could make. It is this type of investment our country, our nation, our leaders, our government should make if we are going to change the narrative for the betterment of our nation.”
“When nothing is done, there will be no change. To make a change, there must be dedicated people who are focused and working together in partnership to push the agenda and that’s why we are optimistic. This is our third work, we have done this over two past years, what we have seen, the promises the fellows held, the kind of work they are doing, the kind of impact they are making, and the kind of multiplication we are seeing out there gives us that very confidence that even as we do the third one, it would offer a lot for the nation and for our women and young women.”
In his views on the training, a media specialist, who also serve as a facilitator at the programme, Mr John-Paul Akinduro said the training fellowship is commendable because of the paucity of information on the challenges of sexual and reproductive health, but that it is not enough to tackle the challenge.
Akinduro said “This training is timely, important, crucial because there is a lack of information out there in terms of sexual and reproductive health. You find out that people are being largely misinformed.
“So this training has brought key stakeholders, the media, advocates, policy makers together under one roof to dish out the right information to interact, to ask them what they have been thinking, what they were taught before they came here and to also give some sort of direction in terms of how do we project the SRHR issues, how do we call the attention of all the stakeholders to fund a common course
“This training is not enough. It’s just one of those things that are needed. You know to get it out there to put the issue and the issues on the front burner. This training is just to reawake our consciousness, to tap us while we’re sleeping that there are a lot of these things happening around us.
“Harmful practices, FGM, child marriage, what have you, name them. And people have their own perceptions all about this. So the training is just to set the ball rolling. The training by AHEAD and Guttmacher is not the only training in this regards, we have had several other trainings but we still need to do more especially with the media.
“The media has to be the driving force in this direction because everything they put out there goes a long way. So the media should help in propagating this message, help in correcting some traditional beliefs we have been holding unto for years and this things are no longer safe for our people to do, we must take a new course and the media must in a way give evidences, help us to engage stakeholders, help us to engage policy makers, help us engage vulnerable groups who are at the danger of all of these things and the need to turn a new leaf.”
He noted that government has a role to play but “we must not forget, this issue of SRHR largely rests on advocates, we as individuals, government, the legislative that supposed to make laws, but they cannot make all those laws if we don’t convince them, if we don’t put the right information in front of them. They don’t understand, so, it is our job as media practitioners, advocates, individuals to say this issues are critical issues concerning our women, children and men as well. These are issues that we need to discuss and we need laws, we need to enact laws that will help us to do it in the right way
“We need to do more of capacity building, engagements, making so much noise about it, we need to make it a big deal. Like I said the other time during my session, issues of health care has never been a priority for even the media and because the media set the agenda, it is what we set as media practitioners that others will follow. So if we say for instance maternal mortality is a big issue, it will be a big issue, but if we say it’s not a big issue, then it’s not a big issue.
“So, one key thing we need to understand is that the media must be at the forefront. The media has a big role to play in this direction. Because we are the ones to set the agenda, to bring in evidences, network with researchers, to get data from them, personalize the data, work on the data and make the data relatable. That’s our job to do. So we have to be able to stand on our toes. Everywhere in the world, the media plays this kind of role and in Nigeria, we must not take the back sit.”
During the fellowship, participants were taught by various experts and scholars from various fields.
Participants were also expected to carry out projects under the supervising of various mentors and senior fellows who had undergone the training fellowship earlier.
Academy for Health Development (AHEAD) is a not-for-profit research and knowledge management and health development organisation incorporated with the Corporate Affairs Commission of Nigeria 2007.
However, the leadership of the organisation as well as her lead team members have been playing leading roles in national and sub-national research and policy developments activities in Nigeria for over a decade.
Internationally, AHEAD’s team has also played significant leadership and catalytic roles in several research collaborations and health-related agenda-setting policy dialogues.
Over the last two last years, AHEAD has become increasingly known at both national and international levels and have delivered successfully on several projects in her area of core competencies, which are training and capacity development; research (epidemiologic, operations, translational and implementation), health programme management (both community-based and clinical preventive interventions), and evidence-based policy development and advocacy.
