The INFO Project Blog

In a recent interview about the Elements of Family Planning Success, Dr. Alan Bornbusch gives examples of national contraceptive success stories in countries including Bangladesh and Zimbabwe. Dr. Bornbusch, a Public Health Adviser in USAID/Washington’s Office of Population and Reproductive Health, Bureau for Global Health, explains the role of the supply chains and gives strategies for averting bottlenecks (supply choke points) in national contraceptive provision programs.

Zimbabwe has an innovative system that Dr. Bornbusch describes in this video. Trucks come to clinics each month with laptops to work with contraceptive supply managers to determine what supply should be for that month. Then, the supply is “topped up” to carry them through the next month.

Read the transcript of his entire interview, then tell us what you think.

Several INFO staffers journeyed to Washington to attend the two-day FP forum, Strengthening Family Planning Services through Operations Research: Lessons Learned and Future Directions, in the Reagan Rotunda building. The sessions, sponsored by FRONTIERS and ACCESS-FP, were chock full of new ideas. What to do, what to do? For starters, we thought we’d rattle off a a few choice tidbits.

Five Pithy Quotes

1. “The theme of this meeting might be the blurring of family planning” –Ian Askew, on the growing emphasis on integrating services with HIV/AIDS voluntary counseling and testing as well as maternal and child health services.
2. “If you know a woman who got pregnant when she was not meaning to, raise your hand [most hands up]. That’s why we are here today” –Catharine McKaig, ACCESS-FP/JHPIEGO, about why postpartum family planning is so important.
3. “And we are all family planning wallahs here,” –M.E. Khan, Population Council, India, saying that even he is skeptical that family planning should always have a role in antenatal care services.
4. “It’s the year of living dangerously” — Holly Blanchard, ACCESS-FP/JHPIEGO, about the first postpartum year, when providers may not prescribe a hormonal method because bleeding has not resumed. During this year, the risk of pregnancy is very high.
5. “They say LAM is an old wives tale”–Marcos Arevalo, Population Council, Mexico, about policymakers’ reluctance to endorse and support breastfeeding as a modern family planning method.

Four Surprising Statistics (or, why operations research matters!)

1. 61% of HIV-positive adolescents used no contraceptive method during first sex (Harriet Birungi, Population Council, Kenya, during a presentation on the family planning needs of HIV-positive youth).
2. Every year in Africa, 250,000 women die every year in childbirth (Annie Mwangi, Population Council, Kenya, explaining midwives’ crucial role in expanding service delivery).
3. Cost of IUD insertion right after delivery is as low as $2.14 (John Pile, ACQUIRE/EngenderHealth, on long-acting and permanent contraceptive methods during postpartum period).
4. Women using LAM were 20 times less likely to be pregnant 1 year after another pregnancy than women who had not been using the lactational amenorrhea method, or exclusive breastfeeding to prevent pregnancy after birth to baby’s six month birthday (Marcos Arevalo, Institute for Reproductive Health, Georgetown University). Read the rest of this entry »

We were interested to see news regarding a recent restriction of advocacy and promotion of condoms and other forms of modern contraception in the state of Anambra, Nigeria. The state commissioner for health explains “The use of condoms has greatly encouraged immorality” and sexual education for children should emphasize abstinence.

Read about the changes, the controversy and the reasons for this restriction on UN’s humanitarian news and analysis site, IRIN.

Kannada is spoken in Southern India’s Karnataka province, famously home to booming Bangalore, aka South Asia’s Silicone Valley. Bangalore appears to be booming, given its roaring new-economy growth of 8% per year, but the city’s “crumbling” infrastructure and poor surrounding regions are suffering. It’s no wonder, given the city and surrounding state’s rapid growth in population.

So, then, how do you say “Family Planning” in Kannada?

Actually, the translation work has been done–that is, job aids, checklists and guidance on methods from the Family Planning: A Global Handbook for Providers have already been translated into Kannada under the guidance of Chief Medical Officer Dr. K. Ravi Kumar (counseling clients above right).

Read the rest of this entry »

In conjunction with our new project on the elements of successful family planning methods, we’ve been querying experts to see which components they believe are crucial. Recently we spoke with the man who wrote the book (literally) on contraception, Dr. Robert Hatcher of Emory University (Dr. Hatcher was a also key technical advisor on the Global Handbook INFO produced earlier this year).

He emphasized the importance of providing highly-effective long-lasting methods such as the IUD and implants, but also of something more basic–the empowerment of women. He said there won’t be the financial support needed for an effective program without this essential element.

Read the rest of this entry »