My name is Adinweruka Ifunanyachukwu (she/her), and I am a 5th-year medical student and the current student leader at my university chapter. We are a relatively new chapter, and we have so far carried out a comprehensive sexual and reproductive health education outreach to over 400 youth between the ages of 13 and 19.
We also planned a webinar on “Addressing the Impact of Gender Based Violence on Access to Family Planning and Reproductive Health Services; Overcoming the Barriers as a Health Care Provider“. We had an amazing speaker who shared extensive knowledge and expertise on the topic. We are looking forward to providing much more hands-on reproductive health training for medical students and educating our community about reproductive health and rights.
Access to reproductive health is one of the challenges in our community. Currently, less than 20% of Nigerian women use a modern form of contraception. In addressing this issue, we need to name, understand, and address the barriers.
Gender-based violence affects millions of lives. In all its various forms, it acts as a barrier to reproductive health services. Physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, financial abuse, technology-facilitated abuse, harassment, femicide, and medical misogyny all play a role in limiting access to reproductive health both at the level of the individual seeking care and the level of care they receive at the health facility. As future health professionals and advocates for reproductive health, rights, and justice. It is important to learn how to address it at all levels.
A memorable highlight was when the speaker, Chinyere Ama-Oji (IP Program Coordinator for Gender-Based Violence, IFMSA), led us through an exercise to identify barriers to reproductive health caused by gender-based violence that we had seen/heard about in our setting and group them into systemic barriers, provider-level barriers, barriers and survivor-related barriers.
We also identified those that are unintentionally reinforced through language and communication. It was impactful for the participants and me. We gained a lot of tools to identify and address gender-based violence as a barrier to reproductive health, as well as to continually educate our community about gender-based violence and how to speak out and act. We learned, practically, what our actions and inaction represent for the future of reproductive health and the role we play. I believe this will improve access to reproductive health in the far and near future.
Some difficulties we faced were finding participants and timing. Medical students are very busy, but I was happy we found the perfect time and the most wonderful participants.
It’s scary at first to start a chapter; you may be afraid of the backlash. But you’ll find wonderful people passionate or wanting to be passionate, and it’ll make all the difference. My advice to other medical students is: You can do it. Communicate with your members a lot. I also had a wonderful student organizer who made it much easier.
