Some health practitioners have called on government and the private sector to leverage technology to provide sexual and reproductive health services to Nigerians, especially youths.
They made the call during a panel discussion on “The Changing Faces of Content Creation in Africa: How will our stories be told in the next 10 years”, at the 2022 AfricaNXT week, on Friday in Lagos.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that AfricaNXT, formally Social Media Week, is an annual event and has its theme as “Reimagine Now, Co-create Next” for 2022 edition.
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According to the practitioners, digitising and investing in tech startups that target sexual and reproductive health of young people will reduce issues of unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases in the society.
They said technology has the capability to provide answers to young people who want to connect and need answers on questions like ‘what to do’, ‘where to go’ and ‘what commodities needed’, when it came to sexual and reproductive matter.
One of the panelists, Dr Rhoda Robinson, Executive Director, HACEY Health Initiative, said there is no place in the world where innovation resides in the public sector.
According to her, regulators are always catching up with innovators in private sectors to achieve purpose.
Robinson said the private sector should leverage innovations on their side to share information about sexual and reproductive health to youths by slotting sexual message like “condom prevents unwanted pregnancy” in their advertisements.
She said private sector could also contribute by funding research and innovations targeting modern day needs of youths in area of sexual and reproductive health.
Also speaking, Dr Omowumi Ogunrotimi, Executive Director, Gender Mobile Initiative, said technology has ways of solving health and social problems such as cultural belief of some parents that eight-year-olds should not be educated about sexual and reproductive life.
“Young ones now have direct access to useful information about sexual and reproductive health on the internet.
“Technology has closed the gap of unfair attitude usually meted to younger people who want sexual-related services by health workers. A young lady can now order material like condom online if they don’t want negative attitude from pharmacists.
“Social media like facebook is also a great tool to preach message of sexual and reproductive health to the targeted young audience,“ she said.
Dr Isaiah Owolabi, Co-Founder, HACEY Health Initiative, said advanced technology like artificial intelligence, data management and robotics are critical in formulating good government policies on sexual and reproductive health.
He adviced government to use Public-Private Partnership to build youths-friendly health facilities and technology.
“Government should do more in closing the gender digital gap and ensure availability of needed health technology in rural communities for youths,“ he said.
Mr Abiola Oshunniyi, Technology and Innovation Consultant, said youths should explore useful health technology to make fortunes.
He said they could do this by learning skills that solve sexual and reproductive health issues and engaging in health tech startups and healthcare apps development. (NAN)
