With COVID-19 bringing the needs of children and adolescents into sharp focus, the Government of Kazakhstan has taken recent and purposeful steps to ensure this population has universal access to health coverage, including important sexual and reproductive health services that were otherwise out of reach.
“The wellbeing of children is a solid guarantee of the successful future of our country,” said Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, the President of Kazakhstan.
In the past, access to well-funded youth-friendly health services in Kazakhstan was been limited. Facilities were privatized, mostly located in large cities, and not covered by insurance; as a result, just 1 percent of young people 14 to 28 years old utilized these services. A package of new regulations lowered the age of consent for access to services without parental sign-off, scaled up the Health Promoting Schools Initiative throughout the country, and led to the opening of more than180 youth health centers throughout the country.