The eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) agreed by the United Nations (UN) World Summit in 2000, were widely acclaimed as a landmark for the 21st century (1). Nevertheless, several international organizations were disappointed that sexual reproductive health (SRH) had not been explicitly mentioned in the MDGs. With the influential support of WHO, they embarked on a lobbying campaign to persuade the UN to include reproductive health (RH) in the MDGs by the time of the UN’s next World Summit, which was scheduled for 2005.

The campaign gave WHO the opportunity it needed to raise the profile of sexual reproductive health (SRH) in the public perception of what health care should be. In 2004, the World Health Assembly accepted the first RH Strategy (2), drawn up by the WHO Department of Reproductive Health Research (RHR), thus sending a strong message to countries that they should:

. . .make reproductive and sexual health an integral part of national planning and budgeting, to strengthen the capacity of health systems, and to ensure all aspects of reproductive and sexual health are included with national monitoring and reporting (footnote 2, page 8).

After many years, WHO was in a stronger position to promote sexual and reproductive health care as the key to improving the general health of a nation’s population. One of the main outcomes of the 60th General Assembly of the UN held in 2005 was a resolution for all countries of the world “to achieve universal access to RH by 2015” (3). SRH was to be delivered through primary health care (PHC), integrated with the strategies to attain the internationally agreed MDGs, and all this was to be done within the context of human security and human rights.

To achieve universal access to SRH by 2015, national health-care systems must increase their drive and plans to provide a well-functioning service for the action-oriented and inclusive delivery of SRH care by a competent workforce.

The latter must have the competence (knowledge, skills and attitude) and the means (motivation, setting, medical commodities, tools and job aids etc.) to provide an appropriate basic SRH package. Capacity-strengthening is therefore a main component of SRH strategic work and includes strengthening the capacity of health systems, as well as planning for and funding the training and education of health workers.

The 25th and 26th meetings of the Sexual and Reproductive Health Scientific and Technical Advisory Group (4, 5) recommended the “continuation of work on defining core competencies (clinical, management, counseling) for health care providers in sexual and reproductive health”. Therefore, the RHR led the development and definition of the core SRH competencies that should be integrated into the provision of PHC.

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Amungwa Athanasuis Nche  - Health & Dev't Certified Training Professional   |41.202.196.xxx |2011-02-15 22:23:27 In Cameroon, the capacity-building component of SRH is being well developed now with the creation of the first state registered midwifery school last year and a master of reproductive health faculty in one of the country's private universities this year. The low-autonomy national association of nurses, midwives and health technicians which had been clamoring for this since 1987 is now contented but is still lamenting that it was not consulted in decision making and curriculum development for the initiation of these courses. SRH would be very useful in HIV/STI prevention and be able to scale down these infections. Reply 0   0

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