No. 001 May 2021 Newsletter – Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights in the WHO African Region
Focus: Implementing WHO guidelines on Self-care interventions and WHO guidelines on Safe Abortion Care in the WHO African Region: an opportunity to reduce maternal mortality in Africa
Self-care is the ability of individuals, families and communities to promote and maintain health, prevent disease, and to cope with illness and disability with or without the support of a health-care provider. The scope of self-care includes health promotion, disease prevention and control, self-medication; providing care to dependent persons, seeking hospital/specialist care if necessary and rehabilitation including palliative care.
Self-care interventions are evidence-based information, medicines, diagnostics, products and technologies that are fully or partially separate from formal health services and that can be used with or without the direct supervision of a health worker. Self-care interventions aim to strengthen the capacity of individuals to access quality health care and can be especially beneficial for disadvantaged individuals or those living in areas or situations where access to services is limited.
Overall, these interventions provide an alternative or complementarity alternative to access health care.
Examples of self-care interventions include: self-injectable DMPA sub-cutaneous contraceptive, HIV self-testing, HPV self- sampling, home-based ovulation predictor kits, over the counter oral contraceptives. All these interventions aim to strengthen the capacity of individuals to access quality health care even for those living in disadvantaged environments.
WHO has developed guidelines on Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) including safe abortion care and self-care interventions for health to improve access of quality health services to women and reduce maternal mortality due o preventable causes using health system approach in health facilities as well as in communities. Through the support of AFRO- Sweden project ‘from COVID to Health’ to sustain and improve the quality of Sexual Reproductive Health/Family Planning services during COVID-19, and the SRHR Initiative WHO/AFRO conducted, in collaboration WHO Head Quarter (HQ) a Regional SRHR forum to disseminate WHO guidelines on Safe Abortion and Postabortion Care and WHO Consolidated Guideline on self- care interventions for health in the African Region.
There are ongoing plans to introduce and/or scale up the implementation of these guidelines across the region.
Source: World Health Organization