Women, children and Youth

Affairs
The Federal Ministry of Health, Women’s, children and youth affairs directorate is
responsible to coordinates and leads most gender, child, youth, and disability-related
activities of the health sector by working closely with other directorates, federal hospitals,
and agencies as well as Regional and City administration health bureau structures to
ensure women, men, youth, Persons with disability equally benefit from the health services. 
The directorate has been supporting all its structures which are 4 federal hospitals, 7
agencies as well as 2 City Administration and 10 Regional Health Bureaus, to ensure
gender, children, youth, and Disability-related issues are mainstreamed and are given due
attention at all levels of the health system. 
The directorate is also given the responsibility of addressing the needs of people with
disabilities. In the past years, the directorate has been working closely with Organizations of
Persons with Disability (OPDs) and the National Association on various health-related
issues. 
Since its restructuring, WCYA Directorate has implemented a number of activities that
aimed to increase the accessibility of services to women, children, youth, and persons with
disabilities. Moreover, activities in relation to enhancing the capacity of service providers to
mainstream gender in health service provision and empowering female and youth
employees of the ministry to enable them to participate in leadership roles. WCYAD has
been pushing hard to establish and strengthens Day Care centers to create a conducive
work environment for women staff and to ensure children’s health rights as well as
establishing and strengthening one-stop centers to prevent and respond to Gender-Based
Violence (GBV). 
In this process, the directorate has made remarkable achievements that can lay the
foundation for the realization of its mission.

Vision

“To see women, children, youth and persons with different types of Impairment/ disability
equally participated and benefited from the health services in the sector”
Mission

To ensure that women, children, youth, and disability-related issues are effectively
addressed and, mainstreamed in all policies and programs implemented by the health
sector and realize that women are empowered to shoulder decision-making positions.
Key Strategic Objectives

The key strategic objective of WCYAD will be directed as the following main focuses:-

 Strengthen structures of WCYA at all levels, 

 Mainstreaming gender, women, children, youth, and Disability in all programs,
systems, and activities,
  Women and youth empowerment,
 Child health right protection,
 Creating a conducive workplace environment for women,
 Creating accessible health services for people with disabilities.

Key Recommendations for strategic inputs

Valuable results were attained in improving the status of women/girls, youth, children, and
persons with disability, 

 Mainstream the issue of Women’s, Children, and Youth affairs across the health
system,
 Capacity building for the health workforce,
 Generation and utilization of strategic information including research,
 Health Sector Women, children, youth affairs and, disability-related issue
coordination,
 Promote women empowerment at all levels of health structure,
 Strengthen partnership and networking,
 Facilitate resource mobilization for effective and efficient utilization,
 Ensure gender mainstreaming through gender audit,
 Ensure child health rights through establishing Day Care and Brest feeding corners,
 Ensure gender-based violence health response through developing a strategic plan,
 Ensure accessible health services for people with disabilities.

Case Teams 

The WCYA Directorate has two case teams 

 Women and children Case Team 

 Youth Case Team

Major Roles and Responsibilities 

 Working in collaboration with the Federal Hospitals and Agencies as well as regional
& city administration Health Bureaus women, children and youth Affair Structures
and conduct a consultative workshop every 3 months,
 Provide support, follow-up, and provide feedback to strengthen W/C/Y/Affair
structures of the Federal Agencies, Hospitals, and regional  & city administration
health bureaus,
 Preparing a strategic and annual plan of the directorate in collaboration with
structure, stakeholders, and partners and cascade to the structure,
 Provide modularized and standardized training on gender-based violence for health
service providers,
 Provide capacity building training to health sector professionals to mainstream the
issue of women, children, youth, and disability-related issues,
 Establish and Strengthening Day Cares and breastfeeding corners, 
 Strengthen and expand one-stop centers for prevention and response of Gender-
Based Violence/Sexual Violence ( GBV/SV)
 Develop a guideline in relation to a child from a Health perspective,
 Establish a system for preventing sexual harassment and implement an awareness-
raising mechanism on gender-based violence,
 Develop a National Strategic Plan for the Prevention and Response of Sexual
Violence,
 Empower women to be able competent and qualified,
 Ensure equitable, accessible, and affordable access to people with disabilities in
relation to health services;
 Strengthening internal coordination with  relevant directorates,
 Strengthen coordination with  partner organizations and stakeholders;
 Conduct  health sector gender Audit,
 Conduct gender analysis in different thematic areas,
 Conduct research and surveys to empower women, youth, and persons with
disabilities, 
 Monitor and evaluate all activities of the WCYA Directorate and structures regularly
and determine new methods to improve performance