The reproductive and sexual health needs of female adolescents differ from those of adults female. There is a growing concern about the female adolescent health and reproductive needs and challenges such as unwanted pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections (STIs) abortion, and post abortion care services and use of contraceptive. Though most of them usually do reluctantly seek reproductive services, it is necessary for them to gain insights earlier on current practices and information on health services concerning their health to enable them get the required interventions to tackle their reproductive health needs and challenges. This paper aims at identifying some of the secondary school female adolescents’ health needs and challenges and suggest counselling interventions to handle them. The sample consisted of 160 female adolescents randomly selected from secondary schools in educational district v of Lagos state. A researcher constructed questionnaire was used to collect data to test two hypotheses formulated for the study. The data was analyzed using Pearson’s product moment correlation statistics. The findings show that there is relationship between the use of contraceptives and prevention of unwanted pregnancies among female adolescents and also that there is no significant difference between access to reproductive health information and sexually transmitted infections among them. Based on the findings, the study listed some counselling implications which is that counsellors should provide sexuality information for female adolescents in schools to enable them handle and monitor their reproductive health needs and challenges.
Keywords: Female Adolescents, Reproductive Health, Reproductive needs.
