Gladys Kahaka

Gladys Karirirue Kahaka is a Namibian biotechnologist who was a recipient of the 2012 L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science. She was the first Namibian to receive the award. She studies the genetics and molecular structure of plants. Quotes You also work with communities on reproductive health and birth control. How does birth control help conservation? Many people lack access to family planning – despite wanting to manage the number spacing of births? INTERVIEW: Conservationist Gladys Kalema talks tourism and the pandemic On 02 Jul Birth control helps conservation by reducing poverty and hunger in communities that live around protected areas and wildlife-rich habitats. If families are better able to balance the family budget by having fewer children to feed, they are less likely to enter the park for food and fuelwood and are better able to send their children to school, enabling them to break the cycle of poverty. We train Village Health and Conservation Teams (VHCTs) to incorporate family planning into their routine household visits so that appropriate and voluntary family planning methods are more accessible and available to those who want them. High population growth and density places greater pressure on natural resources and increases competition for food and land – creating opportunities for human-wildlife conflict and increasing the likelihood of land encroachment of protected areas, poaching, and illegal entry into protected areas and heightening the risk of zoonotic disease transmission. What impacts has the pandemic had on this initiative? We have continued to offer voluntary family planning through our Village Health and Conservation Teams (VHCTs) who have been following strict SOPs during their household visits to prevent the spread of COVID-19 (including regular hand washing, sanitizing, and mask-wearing). People have been able to get three monthly interval contraceptive injections in the comfort of the home of a VHCT who also distribute other methods of family planning including pills, condoms and refer community members for longer-term methods including implants and Intrauterine Devices (IUDs). Did households with the stay-home campaign remain faithful to these methods? We have tried as much as possible to enable households to remain faithful to these methods even during the stay at home campaign. Our programs have continued as planned during lockdown periods as we were granted permission from the Ministry of Health to continue implementing our activities so those who wanted family planning methods were still able to access them through our VHCTs. External links ‎ Category:Living people Category:Women scientists from Namibia Category:Chemists from Namibia