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Health Providers’ Response to Female Adolescents’ Survivors of Sexual Violence, and Demand Side Barriers in the Utilization of Support Services in Urban Slums of Nigeria
Ikuteyijo, O.O.; Kaiser-Grolimund, A.; Fetters, M.D.; Akinyemi, A.I.; Merten, S. Health Providers’ Response to Female Adolescent Survivors of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence and Demand Side Barriers in the Utilization of Support Services in Urban Low-Income Communities of Nigeria. Healthcare2023, 11, 2627.
Ikuteyijo, O.O.; Kaiser-Grolimund, A.; Fetters, M.D.; Akinyemi, A.I.; Merten, S. Health Providers’ Response to Female Adolescent Survivors of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence and Demand Side Barriers in the Utilization of Support Services in Urban Low-Income Communities of Nigeria. Healthcare 2023, 11, 2627.
Ikuteyijo, O.O.; Kaiser-Grolimund, A.; Fetters, M.D.; Akinyemi, A.I.; Merten, S. Health Providers’ Response to Female Adolescent Survivors of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence and Demand Side Barriers in the Utilization of Support Services in Urban Low-Income Communities of Nigeria. Healthcare2023, 11, 2627.
Ikuteyijo, O.O.; Kaiser-Grolimund, A.; Fetters, M.D.; Akinyemi, A.I.; Merten, S. Health Providers’ Response to Female Adolescent Survivors of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence and Demand Side Barriers in the Utilization of Support Services in Urban Low-Income Communities of Nigeria. Healthcare 2023, 11, 2627.
Abstract
Survivors of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) are often hindered in their quest to access quality healthcare. This could complicate the achievement of the laudable SDG Target 3.7. The study used an ethnographic approach to solicit information from health providers, adolescents, and young women (AYW) in 10 communities from Lagos and Ibadan; two major cities in Nigeria. Findings indicated that the structural system of services provided in the health services at the primary healthcare level was limited, which posed a great challenge in AYW’s utilization of services for sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). Some of the challenges identified by health providers included non-existing counseling services, rehabilitation centers, referral problems, and a lack of training for health providers in handling victims of SGBV. The study provided the context of the health providers’ inadequacy and structural problem of health services in providing comprehensive support services to victims of SGBV like adolescents and young women in the slum setting. This poses a barrier to the utilization of services by the survivors. Necessary inclusive services that will meet the need of the victims of SGBV should be in place at primary healthcare centers close to the people in the community for accessibility.
Keywords
Health providers; female adolescents; slums; sexual and gender-based violence; barriers
Subject
Public Health and Healthcare, Primary Health Care
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
