Emphasising on the need for utilizing right communication strategies to convey to the adolescent audience group, Union Health Secretary Apurva Chandra outlined India’s commitment to implement proactive actions for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ health and wellbeing.
India hosted a side event on Women, Children and Adolescent Health in collaboration with Norway, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (PMNCH) at the seventy-seventh World Health Assembly. The purpose of the event was to share emerging evidence and discoveries, fostering dialogue on pivotal opportunities for investment in maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health and well-being. It aimed to advocate for continued and augmented investment, prompting policy adjustments and their ramifications across diverse stakeholders and sectors, while prioritizing the needs of various population groups.
The focus of the event was on adolescent health and various speakers spoke for various aspects of adolescent health including the need to invest more on this issue. Apurva Chandra, Union Health Secretary and head of the Indian delegation emphasized on the progress made on this topic and the initiatives taken in this regard.
He outlined India’s commitment to implement proactive actions for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ health and wellbeing. He highlighted India’s Reproductive and Child Health (RCH) – I, RCH – II initiatives and the Rashtriya Kishor Swasthya Karyakram which stressed on adolescent health. The rolling out of TeleManas was also mentioned as a key initiative taken by India.
India also emphasized on the need for utilizing right communication strategies to convey to the adolescent audience group. The involvement of youth group representative was also discussed as important stakeholder for planning and implementation of any programme.
India is a young country. Adolescents aged 10–19 constitute about one fifth of India’s population and young people aged 10–24 about one third of the population. The large and increasing share of adolescents and youth in India’s population can translate into a demographic dividend only if policies and programmes focus on the health and well-being of this 243 million strong, yet very vulnerable cohort.
The Government of India launched its National Adolescent Health Strategy to provide health, information and services to meet the diverse needs of adolescents in India in 2014. It is the first step towards addressing adolescent health comprehensively, which in turn, would help achieve improved health outcomes for the whole population.
The aim is to break the inter-generational cycle of poor health considering that investments in adolescents will have an immediate, direct and positive impact on India’s health goals.
The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has designed the Rashtriya Kishor Swasthya Karyakram. The strategy envisions that all adolescents in India are able to realize their full potential by making informed and responsible decisions on their health and well-being.
Adolescent health and nutrition has an inter-generational effect: more than 33 per cent of the disease burden and almost 60 per cent of premature deaths among adults are associated with behaviours or conditions that began or occurred during adolescence—for instance tobacco and alcohol use, poor eating habits, violence, sexual abuse, and risk taking behaviour. The Adolescent Health Strategy is underpinned by evidence that adolescence is the most important stage of the life cycle for health interventions.
