Each year, over 200 million women have an unmet need for modern contraception, more than 45 million women receive inadequate or no gynaecological care, 1 million women and girls acquire HIV, and 25 million abortions are risky. These numbers demonstrate huge gaps in access to basic sexual and reproductive health services that are posing serious challenges to achieving universal health coverage (UHC) by 2030, finds Lancet Study. While, these gaps in access are heightened by reduced financing for international development, and highlight the importance and urgency of strengthening connections between HIV and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) programmes.
The full value of investing in sexual and reproductive health services has been underestimated, as its wide range of benefits has been largely unrecognized. The direct medical benefits of preventing unplanned pregnancies, improving maternal health and preventing, diagnosing and treating sexually transmitted infections including HIV/AIDS are well-known; however, the economic and social benefits are no less real, even if they are more difficult to measure. The global community cannot afford not to fully fund these services to achieve global development goals.
In an exclusive interaction with the founder of Janani, Mr Nilay Mehrotra, we have tried to understand the basics and importance of investing in sexual and reproductive health.
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“Investing in sexual and reproductive health is pretty much important. You invest in your health, after COVID we have seen the real picture of health infrastructure across the world, it becomes very much important for us to not neglect something which is one of the most crucial and important part of our life. Reproductive health and sexual health were never neglected, it always has been there but this market has been so unorganised like people go to ‘Hakims’, people go to unqualified doctors who doesn’t even have an idea about things when you have a problem like this, so we have come with a platform like ‘Janani’ through which we are available for them anytime,” said Mr Nilay Mehrotra.