OUR WORK: HEALTH

The gap

Adolescents in the communities where we work encounter the health system rarely. When they do, they are usually offered one service and sent home. A girl comes for a vaccination and leaves without nutrition counseling, without menstrual hygiene support, and without a reproductive health conversation. There may not be another opportunity for a year.

Women over eighteen face a different version of the same failure. Cervical cancer is one of the most preventable cancers in existence when pre-cancerous lesions are found early. Screening coverage in rural West Africa remains close to zero. The technology is simple, the treatment when caught early is straightforward, and the women are unreached.

Integrated adolescent health services

We couple existing adolescent health services so that a single contact delivers several at once: immunization, sexual and reproductive health, nutrition, and menstrual hygiene support.

This is not a new vertical program. It is a redesign of delivery so that fewer opportunities are missed. Where a district already offers all four services separately, we work to have them offered together, on the same day, at the same table.

Mobile screening and case management

We run community-based campaigns for the early detection of cervical pre-cancerous lesions in women aged eighteen and over, using visual inspection with acetic acid (VIA) and visual inspection with Lugol's iodine (VILI). Both methods are low-cost, require no laboratory, and give a result within minutes, which makes them suitable for communities far from any pathology service.

Every campaign is connected to a referral pathway into the district health system before it begins. A positive result leads to a named facility, a named contact and a follow-up call. Screening without a referral pathway is a diagnosis with nowhere to go, and we do not run those.