Abstract :
The thrust on young people and their health needs is visible in India, which is
reflected in the national policies and programs. Although under the National
Rural Health Mission and Reproductive and Child Health Program,
Government has undertaken establishing adolescent friendly health services
and training of health service providers on Adolescent’s Reproductive and
Sexual Health (ARSH) guidelines so as to address the Sexual and
Reproductive Health (SRH) needs of young people. However, so far, only few
initiatives have been made in this direction and in most of the health centers,
these services are yet to be rolled out on a scale of primary health care.
MAMTA had established a Youth Friendly Center named as Friends’ Clinic
in the resettlement colony at Tigri in New Delhi (2006) to address the SRH
needs of youth in this area. This article describes the Friends’ Clinic and its
experiences, service utilization by youths and perspectives, expectations of
young people presenting to doctors/counselors to inform the development of
youth friendly services. A longitudinal follow-up data of youth participants
who utilized the clinic services was used in this article. A total of 1264 clients
visited the clinic; most of them visited the clinic more than once, totaling up to
3591 visits in the clinic for service utilization. Majority of them were for
treatment services regarding their general/SRH problems; only a few for both
treatment and counseling and very few for only counseling services. The
qualitative data indicated that youth considered that the services provided in
the Friends’ clinic were satisfactory and most importantly, their
confidentiality of problems and services availed were well maintained. There
is a need for improvising strategies to increase outreach activities for
improving uptake of counseling services among the clients, which can help in
addressing most of the myths and perceptions regarding
SRH/STI/HIV/unplanned pregnancies and contraception use among the
adolescents and young people. This article shows that setting-up of special
clinic for adolescents in the public health centers would help in addressing the
adolescents SRH service needs.
Keyword :
Adolescents, Youth Friendly Health Clinic, counseling, treatment, sexual and reproductive health.