Dr. Mrs. Jemima A. Dennis-Antwi
President and Chief Executive Officer for center for Health Development and Research (CEHDAR), Dr. Jemima Dennis Antwi has called on the government and stakeholders to develop a one stop shop unit to treat survivors of sexual violence.
This she believes will help victims to have easy access to quality health care, at an affordable price and on time, making it easy for health care providers to capture evidence on the victims for prosecution.
Dr. Antwi in an interview with Daily Guide said, “When people are affected they go to the health facility, and by the time they go through the processes, they would have lost evidence.”
She explained that this is due to the back and forth that the victims go through from laboratory investigation, and having to do DNA test. “All these are very expensive things that mostly they cannot afford, they go home and wait till they have money to come, but by that time, all evidence is gone,” she said.
“So there is the need for the one stop shop, which the government has started to develop in collaboration with partners to make these accessible to the whole country so that people actually benefit from it,” she urged.
She also stressed on the need to enhance policies related to sexual violence to make sure that people access the services that they need.
“If the policies are there, how can we enhance them, so that we know these policies and put them into practice and actually make it life, so that they are not just document sitting there, but there is life in the policy,” she added.
“It means that the policy is on folding, the policy is making it possible for people to have a better quality of life and the guidelines that will guide step by step approach for people accessing the services that they need,” she explained.
Dr. Jemima believes that when all these measures are available and are working effectively, survivors can seek justice and have a better quality of life.
The survivors can also benefit from these services to bring a sense of relief to the victim because she had the necessary support to enable here move on in life.
By Nafisatu Abdul Razak