Elijah Maseko is a professional nurse at Impungwe Hospital in Witbank. He has been working as a nurse for the past two decades and loves his job.
What he enjoys most about his work in the hospital’s sexual and reproductive health unit is being able to help people with their problems, he says. While it is challenging being a man in this role, he says, he is comfortable being able to deal with his clients and their health problems.
In the past few months he has seen more and more men coming to the hospital and he is inspired by this because he feels this means that men are now beginning to see the benefits of seeking sexual health services.
The biggest challenge, however, is that there are not enough staff members working at his hospital and he would like to see this improved with more human resources.
Elijah was speaking about his work at a training programme by UNFPA's South Africa Country Office, which seeks to improve health workers’ ability to do their jobs. The week-long event aims to provide further skills in the implementation of comprehensive sexual and reproductive health, in line with the national priority interventions for women’s health. This includes the management of sexual assault survivors, increasing access to and utilization of contraception and fertility planning for adults and adolescents, as well as cervical cancer screening.
UNFPA in South Africa is rolling this training out in partnership with Irish Aid, in response to exceedingly high levels of gender-based violence (GBV) in the country. It is being undertaken in conjunction with the provincial departments in four of South Africa's nine provinces – the Eastern Cape (EC), Free State (FS), KwaZulu-Natal and Limpopo (LP). In 2010-2011, the South African Police Service said that more than 60,000 thousand cases of sexual assault were reported.
The project is in response to the government’s recognition that GBV is a human rights issue with major adverse health and social development implications, and that access to safe, effective family planning is a human right. The training also prioritizes the provision of integrated SRH services to vulnerable groups such as women, children, young people, older persons and people with disabilities.
Elijah is pleased to be taking away what he has learnt on the training course, and is enthusiastic about applying this to his everyday work. When asked how he would be using his new skills, he replied that he would work towards changing mindsets about family planning and working towards a contraceptive method mix instead of advocating only condoms.
“For a long time now – because of HIV – we advocated only for the condom as protection. But now I will be working on telling people about their choices of contraception – including the condom. It means that people can now protect against HIV as well as pregnancy and other sexually transmitted infections.” ~ Elijah Maseko
The project ultimately seeks to work towards improving and expanding the capacity of the provincial health systems to deliver high quality SRH services, including management and care of survivors of sexual assault and rape, integration of family planning into SRH programmes, and implementation of cervical cancer screening guidelines. Furthermore, the programme aims to strengthen the capacity of professional health workers and medical social workers to deliver high quality SRH services, including quality services for sexual assault survivors and family planning integration.
UNFPA has trained 594 health professional in the provinces in the past five months. The final outcome is to build a competent cadre of health care and social work professionals in managing sexual assaults.
