Promoting reproductive health through phone counselling

Virtually every community in Nigeria has a telephone line service available to it. Most especially since the advent of the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) came to the country few years back. And come to think of it, most of the causes of maternal and newborn mortality cases are as a result of unavoidable issues, which are either caused by lack of information or poor health infrastructure.

Public health experts and social workers have suggested that if toll-free hotline telephone services which address not just HIV & AIDS issues, but other Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) challenges are made available, this will go a long way in promoting safe SRH issues.

Iwalola Akin-Jimoh, Executive Secretary, Youth Empowerment Foundation, a Non Governmental Organisation in Nigeria that works on SRH issues amongst youths said “the hotline telephone service is an urgent response to factual, accurate and credible information”. She buttresses that “at a time when quacks and charlatans are trying to abuse the national response to the HIV epidemic to deceive people, telephone counseling by professionals and trained hands is necessary”.

In Australia, a survey was carried out in November, 2006 amongst 1,022 women on the need for a hotline telephone counseling service on SRH issues.

The result of the survey showed that 81% of the women that were reached wanted a hotline counselling service that could give them counselling on SRH issues. This shows that four out of every five believed that it was necessary. (http://www.mariestopes.com.au/)

Also in India in 1996, an individual fellowship programme for hotline counselling on SRH issues called Talking About Reproductive and Sexual Health Issues (TARSHI) begun. The services of this fellowship helped to a great extent in providing people of reproductive age with adequate information and proper referrals, served as an avenue for providing psycho-social support to People Living with HIV & AIDS, and also provided basic information on home-based care for caregivers. (http://www.tarshi.org/)

Deputy Head, Public Private Partnership of the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA) in Nigeria, Effiong Eno is of the opinion that with the continuous support of telephone hotline counseling, better and safer SRH practices will be witnessed among young people.

Having hotline counseling totally dedicated to SRH issues will go a long way in promoting safe sexual and reproductive health practices. This will also serve the following category of people: A number of women of reproductive age who often do not consult experts about issues that relate to their reproductive health, because they either complain about the cost, or are unclear about the procedure and techniques that will be used.

It was also said that telephone counseling, through well trained counsellors, would be able to offer callers simple, comprehensive information of what they can do through referrals.

More so, the issue of anonymity is an advantage in the use of hotline counselling. This gives the caller a sense of privacy, because he/she does not know the counsellor, thus the place of confidentiality and openness.

Another reason that Eno gave why hotline counseling would serve as a source of promoting safe SRH is the fact that hard to be reached people of reproductive age (especially women) who either as a result of their culture or religion are not allowed easy access to proper health care will be able to get adequate and professional counselling that could save their lives and that of their children.

It is worthy of note that the hotline counselling, if used as appropriate, could serve as an on-going tool in promoting safe SRH.