The meeting was to endorse a 15-point recommendation made by Technical Advisors to the First Ladies of Member States of OAFLA.

The meeting was held at the 19th General Assembly of OAFLA, organised on the side-lines of the 29th AU Summit on the theme ‘‘Building on 15 years of engagement to harness the demographic dividend of Africa through promoting the needs of adolescents and their access to youth-friendly health services”

The First Lady chaired the meeting on behalf of the President of OAFLA, Dr Gertrude Mutharika, who is also the First Lady of the Republic of Malawi.

In her remarks, Mrs Rebecca Akufo-Addo announced that OAFLA has formalised partnerships with the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the African Medical Research Foundation (AMREF) to help boost the work of the organisation in the areas of HIV/AIDS, Cervical Cancer, among other diseases.

Recommendations

The Technical Advisors recommended, among others, a change of the name of the organisation to make it more reflective of the dynamics of society.

They noted the idea should be considered since the majority of the first ladies were in favour of the name change.

They, however, recommended that the change of name should be decided upon in January 2018 and the new name should be used starting 2020.

Another recommendation called for the amendment of the rules on the term in office of the OAFLA President.

The meeting ended with an endorsement of the recommendations of the Technical Advisors of the First Ladies, as well as a communique to indicate the focus area of OAFLA during the General Assembly.

The Steering Committee Meeting was followed by a General Assembly Closed Session on Monday morning, which was attended by all First Ladies of Member States to further deliberate on the endorsements made by the Steering Committee.