Integrating Family Planning and Immunization for High Impact

Anonymous — Wed, 14 Sep 2016 13:13:29 +0000

Integrating Family Planning and Immunization for High Impact Anonymous (not verified) September 14, 2016

July 12, 2012

According to the 2011 Demographic and Health Survey (DHS), only 12% of married women use a modern method of contraception in Senegal, with injectables (3%) and oral pills (3%) being the most used methods. The same DHS showed that nearly 95% of infants receive the BCG vaccine shortly after birth to protect them from tuberculosis, 82% receive the anti-polio vaccine at nine months, and nearly 63% of Senegal infants are fully vaccinated.

Senegalese mother and child
(click for more photos)

In Senegal, the IntraHealth-led Health Services Improvement Program is working with the Ministry of Health to scale up the integration of a package of health services. As part of this package, health posts throughout the country are working to integrate family planning and immunization. Considered one of the promising High Impact Practices in family planning, this integration, when scaled up, could have an important impact on increasing contraceptive prevalence in a country where family planning use continues to stagnate.

Studies have found that integrating services such as immunization, which tends to be widely used and acceptable, with other less-used services such as family planning can have a positive impact—and ultimately save resources and time on the part of both health workers and clients1.

In early 2012, the Health Services Improvement Program started to integrate family planning and immunization programming in 2 of the 54 districts covered by the project. Health posts have regular immunization days scheduled each week. During these days a large number of women regularly visit the health post for routine child vaccinations. These visits present a unique opportunity to provide post-partum women with information and services that they might not otherwise be aware of.

Women, who come to the health post to vaccinate their children, are invited to listen to informational sessions on a variety of topics including family planning, antenatal and prenatal care, the benefits of routine vaccinations, and the advantages of facility-based births. The sessions provide clients with an opportunity to ask questions of qualified personnel and, in the case of family planning, receive counseling and service that same day. Long-term methods such as implants and IUDs are provided by the head nurse while community health workers provide other shorter-term methods.

Oumoukhaïry Bâ, the head nurse at the Keur Soce health post, said, “It makes sense to provide integrated services. Since women are here for their children anyway, the [women] can also get information and the other services, like family planning, at the same time,” instead of returning several times to the clinic for other services like immunization.

One client who benefitted from family planning services the same day that her child received immunizations said, “The availability of these two services, on the same day at the health post, allows me to save on transportation costs as well as time.”

IntraHealth is tracking the integration of these services through regular monitoring on the number of women who attend information sessions, the number of women who choose a method, and the number of children vaccinated over a given month. The collection of this information will help the Ministry of Health and IntraHealth better understand how integrated services are helping improve the provision of services and meeting the needs of the Senegalese population.

The Health Services Improvement Program is led by IntraHealth International and funded by the United States Agency for International Development.

1. Wallace AS, Ryman TK, Dietz V. 2012. The Journal of Infectious Diseases. Experiences integrating delivery of maternal and child health services with childhood immunization programs: systematic review update. 205(Suppl 1):S6–19.

Senegal Health Services Improvement Project Family Planning Maternal, Newborn, & Child Health

New USAID mHealth Compendium Highlights IntraHealth's Digital Health Solutions

Anonymous — Tue, 13 Sep 2016 12:26:11 +0000

New USAID mHealth Compendium Highlights IntraHealth's Digital Health Solutions Anonymous (not verified) September 13, 2016 June 29, 2015

Mobile technologies are now available to 95.5% of the world’s population, according to the new mHealth Compendium Volume 5, released this month by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the African Strategies for Health project.

Mobile phones have become inexpensive and ubiquitous, including throughout Africa. As a result, mobile-based programs to improve health care have flourished. USAID’s new report highlights 41 case studies of such initiatives, including three from IntraHealth International:

SEDA Automated Health Data Exchange System

This integrated health data and commodity-monitoring system in Senegal uses mobile phones for data collection, reporting, and supervision. Users can aggregate data in a web-based central system to visualize and manage decision support.

Through the IntraHealth-led Health Services Improvement project and in partnership with Senegal’s Ministry of Health and Social Action, this system is helping to improve the quality and frequency of the data collected at the district and regional levels.

It is also transforming the methods and speed with which health workers, supervisors, and senior-level ministry staff use data to make decisions about maternal, neonatal, and child health programs, and to prevent stockouts of essential medicines and contraceptive products.

Read the SEDA case study.

Informed Push Model

In Senegal, the absence of a well-functioning supply chain has long been a barrier to family planning services. It is one reason Senegal’s contraceptive prevalence rate is so low (12.3% percent in 2010) and its unmet need for family planning among married women so high (29%).

To address these issues and make contraceptive products consistently available to those who want them, IntraHealth is expanding the approach known as the Informed Push Model nationally in Senegal.

Through the Informed Push Model, trained logistics operators deliver supplies to points of sale on a regular schedule, restocking where necessary and recording quantities of products sold. The logistics operators use their phones to collect data that are then used to ensure that each site and warehouse is sufficiently stocked, and allows manufacturers to keep pace with demand. This takes the burden of tracking and ordering inventory off of pharmacies and clinics.

Read the Informed Push Model case study.

mHero

Severe shortages of qualified health workers, poor communication and coordination on the front lines, and other health systems issues have exacerbated the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. But even before the outbreak, these challenges made high-quality health services difficult to deliver in the region.

In August 2014, the mHero partnership—led by IntraHealth, USAID, UNICEF, and a team of international stakeholders—created mHero, a free mobile phone-based system that connects health workers to health officials, to each other, and to critical information that can save lives.

The mHero platform allows health workers, government authorities, and other key stakeholders to engage in real-time, targeted communication via two-way short message service (SMS), interactive voice response, and direct calls. mHero communications—which are flexible and scalable, and can be triggered both centrally and locally—go far beyond the traditional message blasts offered by many technology vendors, enabling stakeholders to rapidly respond to health workers’ needs.

Read the mHero case study.

Read more in the mHealth Compendium Volume 5.

Senegal Health Services Improvement Project