Sharif Mohammed Ismail Hossain, M.E. Khan, and Ubaidur Rob. "Introducing and scaling up emergency contraception at the national level: Lessons learned from Bangladesh." 

ABSTRACT

The paper demonstrates how operations research (OR) results and their strategic use could help in adopting/changing national policy on emergency contraception (EC) and shares lessons learned in introducing EC in the national family planning program to make it easily accessible to all who need it. An OR project undertaken by Directorate General of Family Planning in collaboration with the FRONTIERS program demonstrated that Bangladeshi women, who are frequently exposed to unprotected sex for various reasons, need EC to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancies. Based on OR results and strong media support for introducing ECP, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MOHFW) decided to introduce it in the national family planning program. During the last three years, FRONTIERS Program assisted MOHFW in developing a training curriculum, building its capacity in EC training, monitoring the quality of ECP services provided, and documenting the processes. Assistance was also provided in modifying management information system and using service statistics for decisionmaking. Over the period, 45,000 doctors, paramedics, and field workers were trained including 13 percent NGO providers. Currently, 19,000 EC pill packets are used every month, which we believe significantly less than the expected level of unprotected sex. Review workshops with program managers and providers recommended further policy change to make the service delivery more user friendly and demanded a mass media campaign. The program still faces many challenges, including strengthening BCC activity and educating potential users.

Learning objectives

• Participant will learn how OR results could be used for advocacy and scaling up.
• How to build partnership with government and donors in scaling up the interventions.
• Logistics difficulties in scaling up interventions at the national level.
• How partnering, long-term technical assistance, and adequate resources facilitate the scaling up of interventions.

Oral Session 5190.0—International Issues in Emergency Contraception
Wednesday, 7 November 2007, 2:30–4:00 pm

APHA 2007 Conference Web site
 

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This page updated 22 October 2007

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