PROTECTING THE POPULATION: ENSURING ACCESS TO CONTRACEPTIVES FOR WOMEN AND GIRLS IN BOTSWANA

Ensuring the health system can deliver for populations in need is crucial, particularly during emergencies. With the onset of COVID-19 in 2020, continuity of services experienced a strain to adequately deliver routine health services. Due to interruptions in the global supply chain, the flow of reproductive health commodities was greatly hampered, leading to stockouts of contraceptives. However, we know the centrality of ensuring women and girls have access to modern contraception to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS). Access to family planning increases girls’ access to education and empowers women and girls to develop skills and secure jobs. Furthermore, empowering couples to plan their families helps increase household savings and provides economic benefits for communities. Ultimately, family planning is key to harnessing the demographic dividend and has a substantial impact on countries. Therefore, when countries can ensure that every person can choose, obtain, and use quality contraceptives and other essential reproductive health products whenever they need them, is crucial to fulfilling their Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR). Botswana, just like other countries in the world, was not spared from the COVID-19 pandemic that started in

March 2020. To ensure that hard-won gains in Sexual and Reproductive Health are not rolled back due to COVID-19, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the United Nations’ Sexual and Reproductive Health agency, in collaboration with the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China, provided a generous support through the procurement of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and contraceptives worth $500,000 to the Ministry of Health. This was done through the South-south Cooperation programme led by the China International Center for Economic and Technical Exchanges (CICETE), with the goal to contribute to continuity of quality sexual reproductive health services and protection of the health workforce in the face of COVID-19. The PPE for the health workforce helped keep the virus from spreading and whilst ensuring that women and girls’ needs and rights are included in all aspects of the humanitarian response to COVID-19. The family planning information, counselling and services (including emergency contraception) were indeed lifesaving and supported a resilient health system during the COVID- 19 pandemic response. As a result of this support, by the end of 2023, over 100,000 beneficiaries had accessed modern contraceptives across the country, particularly in rural communities, which are at greatest need and often left behind. The strategic partnership of CICETE, Ministry of Health and UNFPA helped ensure a sustained flow of reproductive health commodities crucial for preventing HIV infections,

Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIS), unintended pregnancies, unsafe abortions as well as averting maternal deaths. For Botswana, these results were significant because evidence has demonstrated that family planning optimises women’s freedom to decide if and when to marry or have children, to live free from violence and harmful practices, and to make decisions regarding their bodies indeed empowers women economically and socially. The support from the People’s Republic of China, among other’s contributed to commitments that Botswana has made, such as the ICPD25 Commitments, which prioritized access to contraceptives; the East and Southern Africa (ESA) Commitment on fulfilling the education, health, and well-being of adolescents and young people; and national commitments for adolescents well-being, both seek to expand access to contraceptives for adolescents and young people for the reduction of early and unintended pregnancies and keep girls in schools. This fruitful collaboration continues to be impactful to the family planning programme as well as the lives of women and girls in the country, to ensure that young people become adults before they are parents, that mature men and women have children by choice and not by chance. And that no woman dies while giving life because of an unplanned or an unwanted pregnancy. UNFPA, the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency, works to deliver a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe, and every young person’s potential is fulfilled.