Task-sharing to maintain sexual and reproductive health services during COVID-19

Wednesday, 16 September 2020, 13:00 hrs(1ST)

Background

The emergence of COVID-19 has resulted in the adoption of measures to contain its spread and its direct and indirect impact, especially during lockdown periods. Also, the reprioritization and repurposing of resources including human resources for COVID-19 containment have disrupted routine maternity, contraceptive, abortion, and other sexual and reproductive health services. Social and economic pressures, increasing domestic and gender-based violence and sexual exploitation are the other factors that are reported during this pandemic. Further, the difficulties in accessing contraceptives and essential services like safe abortion deny millions of girls and women the right to control their bodies and lives. The crisis also threatens to shrink girl’s and women’s’ already limited access to sexual and reproductive health information and services. The availability of a skilled health workforce to maintain essential health services has been a challenge everywhere.

During fifth webinar in this series “Task-sharing to maintain sexual and reproductive health services (SRH) during COVID-19”, the availability of health workforce, WHO guidelines on task-sharing in SRH, and the experience of task-sharing in family planning, abortion, and post-abortion services from some SEAR countries were discussed.

Objective

The objective of the webinar was to understand ways to respond to the pandemic in terms of task-sharing in family planning, abortion and post-abortion services. This will help in the implementation of task-sharing and management of routine services along with COVID.

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