This was said yesterday by the youth during the second day of the National Youth Summit on Health and Development that brought together over 100 young people from 14 regions of the country. The summit aims at discussing health challenges facing them. A representative from Mwanza Region, Julius Kiting’ati said young people have a lot of needs involving health issues and that one of them is poor access to health services due being cash-strapped.
Access to health services has been cited as a major challenge facing the youth in the country with the National Health Insurance Funds (NHIF) urged to introduce a scheme for them, unlike the current one, which favours those in higher learning institutions.
This was said yesterday by the youth during the second day of the National Youth Summit on Health and Development that brought together over 100 young people from 14 regions of the country. The summit aims at discussing health challenges facing them. A representative from Mwanza Region, Julius Kiting’ati said young people have a lot of needs involving health issues and that one of them is poor access to health services due being cash-strapped.
They asked the government to urgently consider health insurance for the youth who are more susceptible to diseases.
Kiting’ati added that currently the youth were going through a tough time because for them to access NHIF, they must be in official groups. “The government should consider the youth as a special group. There are Toto cards for children, why not come up with a similar idea for the youth? We also need health insurance. These criteria will not help us,” he said. He further pointed out that in order for the country to achieve the status of an industrial economy, it must invest in the youth’s health. These form the majority of the people who can produce. Seif Ibrahim from Morogoro, who is a representative from Africa Youth and Adolescent Network (AfriYAN), said the government should start implementing the Abuja Declaration on health services.
Mr Ibrahim said the government should consider increasing the health budget from the current 11 per cent to 15 per cent, because the economy of any country including Tanzania can only be built by healthy people.
A student from the Dar es Salaam University College of Education (DUCE), Catherine Madebe said if the youth could access health services, prevalence rate of HIV and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) will go down.
The three-day youth summit, which is organised by Save the Children through the Global Fund Grant, started on Monday and climax today.
