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AFRICA The Population Council has been conducting research and other programs in the sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) region for 40 years. Much of the Council's current portfolio of activities in sub-Saharan Africa are part of the FRONTIERS and Horizons programs. Because SSA carries the heaviest burden of the HIV pandemic and has the least amount of access to reproductive health services of all the Council's regions, it is not surprising that many of the region's activities fall under the work of these two programs. In most of the countries where the Population Council has been active, the focus has been on examining ways to improve availability and the quality of contraceptive and reproductive health services and reducing the transmission of HIV. Recent safe motherhood activities in Kenya included providing technical assistance for updating the standards and national guidelines for essential obstetric care and undertaking innovative research with the Ministry of Health in four districts of Western Province to test new approaches to providing safe motherhood services. The expected outcomes of these activities are improved quality of antenatal, delivery, postnatal, and post abortion care services; demonstrated effectiveness of systems of referral, access, health management, and information, education, and communication services; and enhanced and appropriate safe motherhood components in all safe motherhood strategies. In addition, Population Council staff in Kenya have been engaged in a three-year collaborative project with the K-REP Development Agency to test and scale up a saving and micro-credit program for adolescent girls and to expand the urban-based pilot program to a rural area of Kenya. In South Africa, as part of the study on the transition to adulthood in the context of HIV and AIDS, a project was implemented to increase young people's knowledge of risky behaviors. In Burkina Faso, Council staff worked with the government, the Burkinabe Association for Family Welfare, the Mille Jeunes Filles project, and the United Nations Population Fund/UNICEF/United Nations Foundation to strengthen social and health services to meet adolescent girls' health and development needs. The project aimed to test the feasibility of using community resource people to provide reproductive health information to adolescent girls; define appropriate venues, including special spaces for adolescent girls; determine appropriate content of training; and develop appropriate indicators for evaluating project outcomes. In Ethiopia, Population Council staff worked with the Family Guidance Association of Ethiopia on an operations research study to explore the impact of expanding access to coital-dependent methods of family planning (e.g., male and female condoms) and emergency contraception. Results of the two-year study are expected to point to strengthening the quality of health care services and maximizing the potential of these two methods-either individually or as dual protection-to reduce the risk of both HIV/STI transmission and unwanted pregnancy. Two community-based distribution projects are being undertaken in Cameroon and Côte d'Ivoire in an effort to increase access to and use of reproductive heath services in rural areas of the two countries. Activities consist of strengthening the functional capacity of district health centers and introducing a community-based intervention program on reproductive health services. A research focus in Cameroon was to design a study to test the community-based distribution model and determine its cost-effectiveness in improving access, quality, and sustainability of community-level reproductive health services. Offsite Links |
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