Integrating HIV and Sexual and Reproductive Health: a Pacific specific mapping 2010
Imagine that you are sixteen and recently had unprotected sex with your older boyfriend. You're worried you might be pregnant. You live a long walk from the local health clinic, but you finally find an excuse to slip away from your mother and make it to the clinic.
Luckily the nurse listens to you and doesn't chase you away because you're too young. The nurse gives you good information about different contraceptive choices and you leave having had a contraceptive injection.
Unfortunately, the nurse was not trained to provide HIV and other sexually transmissible infection services. So you leave without knowing whether or not you could have been exposed, or having any tests done to make sure you are OK. This is not to say HIV services are not necessarily available, but you will have to go somewhere else to access them and spend more time and money on transport doing so, which may deter you.
This situation is not unique. It happens time and time again across the world.
Over the past decade and for a range of reasons, HIV services in the Pacific have not always been well connected with other primary sexual and reproductive health care services.
Research undertaken in Africa has found that linking and/or integrating these services can lead to a range of positive outcomes, such as improved access to both sexual and reproductive health and HIV services and improved coverage of underserved and vulnerable populations.
Family Planning International, with support from Population Action International, has therefore recently carried out a mapping exercise in four Pacific Island countries to identify key points of entry and barriers to advocate for and implement integration. Particular elements of the country context in the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Kiribati, such as legislation, policies, socio-cultural views, funding sources, infrastructure and human resource capacity that could affect implementing integration, were examined.
Based on this research, Family Planning International produced the resource ‘Integrating HIV & Sexual and Reproductive Health: a Pacific specific mapping’.
We hope the resource will help facilitate greater discussion among policy makers, programmers and regional stakeholders about Pacific specific HIV and sexual and reproductive health linkages and integration, and that the information it provides can be used to plan for and advance country appropriate planning, financing and implementation of such activities.
Download the report here.