Young people demand access to medicine

Catherine Murombedzi

YOUNG people are calling for the improvement of access to medicine as they see the current set-up as a hindrance to them.The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in conjunction with the International AIDS Society have called for proposals titled: ‘Youth Champions for Differentiated Care’.

The call is open to young people in Malawi, Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. The young people must be aged between 18 and 30 years and a US$10 000 advocacy grant to capacity build will be given to selected candidates.

www.diffrentiatedcare.org is the site where one finds the information. Young people what are you waiting for?

The objective of the grant is to provide advocacy funding to support the continued development of young people living with HIV.

It also aims to shine an advocacy spotlight on key issues regarding differentiated care for young people. This includes adherence, retention in care and community support systems and to facilitate the inclusion of differentiated care models for adolescents and young people.

The winning candidates will be featured in 2017 at the International Aids Conference in Paris.

Kelvin Makura, a young male, said he wanted to see a client centred approach that simplifies and adapts HIV services to be able to serve individual’s needs. He needs to see better service delivery as getting access must be suitable to different people in different areas.

“My needs being in an urban area are different from the needs of a young person in the rural area. Speaking of distance one has to travel is already a barrier to people in rural areas and mobile visits should be available in the hard to reach areas,” said Makura.

“Young people also need to feel safe at the health centres and will be comfortable to be attended to by an equally young medical person. However, that is not usually the case as people as old as my mother attend to us and that in itself is a barrier,” Makura added.

He said more literacy needed to be availed because this was lacking in some youths who later default.

“When I look at default cases, I feel there is a gap in literacy being given. It should not be taken for granted that people knows everything when it comes to adherence to medication. Keep adherence on the radar and that way we will have less young people defaulting,” Makura said.

There have been cases of young people who were doing well on medication suddenly taken ill. On further interrogation it was observed that they got tired of taking medication and pill fatigue set in. They then stopped taking medication, but kept collecting from health centres so everything appears normal, yet they were not taking medication as prescribed.

Janet Bhila said irrespective of anyone’s HIV status, flexibility was called for in access to medicine. She said clinics do not open during weekends and this is the time that youths are not in school, yet facilities are closed.

“Clinics should close a bit late in the afternoon on Saturdays and this will help young people access information on reproductive health rights and keeping them healthy,” Bhila said.

“I feel that youths in boarding schools are constrained and if they could have access or even a weekend they came home this could be helpful. However, on weekends we find that clinics close early so that does not help the situation at all. Nurses have to be friendly and offer stigma free zones to people with different ailments. I understand they face burnout due to the burden of too much workload, but as trained personnel they must try and weather the storm. Most people going through a hard patch,” said Bhila.

“Privacy is needed when one gets at a clinic, but we find that this is not so. People are seated on benches and the consulting room in most clinics is within hearing distance for people seated outside,” said Bhila.

“Staff attitudes have to improve, otherwise young people fail to access health centres for fear of the negative attitudes often displayed by the staff members,” she said.

With the growing cohort of young people accessing ante-retroviral therapy (ART) it is imperative that service delivery modes address the needs of young people.

Zimbabwe being in a resource-limited setting innovative solutions are urgently needed to provide quality medical care to the young people.

From the call proposals the foundation and the AIDS society will develop a better understanding of how ART for young people can be delivered differently across a variety of settings and service delivery modes in sub Saharan Africa.

This is the region that is heavily affected by HIV, TB and malaria on a global scale. Young people also feel the heat of new HIV infections and it has to be business unusual if we are to scale down the new infections in our young people.

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