The INFO Project Blog

Demand for the English edition of INFO’s new guide, Family Planning: A Global Handbook for Providers, has come from nearly every corner of the globe. Health care providers, researchers, and programmers from more than 180 countries have ordered the guidebook, which is available at no cost to developing country readers. More than 65,000 copies, and more than 78,000 accompanying wall charts, were distributed in the first six months of publication.

INFO is collaborating with professional organizations and universities around the world to disseminate the resource to the widest audience possible: Currently, the project is overseeing the translation of at least 10 foreign language editions.

 UNFPA is supporting the production of Portuguese, Russian, French and Arabic editions–an imperative considering INFO has received over 2000 orders for Arabic-language handbooks alone.

  The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) has produced a Spanish edition in collaboration with the Centro Latinoamericano de Perinatologia y Desarrollo Humano and Salud Pública de Mexico

 The People to People network of Ethiopian physicians are translating the guidebook into Amharic for use in their new Packard Foundation-funded adolescent family planning and reproductive health center in Addis Ababa

 Versions in Mandarin, Swahili, Romanian, Hindi, and Urdu and being created by organizations dedicated to family planning in those regions

The INFO Project encourages the adaption of the handbook in various formats by providing to interested organizations a complete set of text and design files as well as diverse examples of ways the handbook’s easy-to-digest content is being used by others.

For example, the Philippine Department of Health used it to develop national guidelines on family planning, and EngenderHealth is using the guide for training and distribution to improve quality of care for 200 institutions in Ghana’s more impoverished districts. After testing local versions in Guatemala, Kenya, Peru and South Africa, the Population Council adapted the handbook’s content to develop counseling recommendations and job aids to be translated into French and Spanish.

Meanwhile, medical schools around the world, including South Africa’s Nelson Mandela School of Medicine and the Mashad University of Medical Sciences in Iran, and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi, are updating their curriculum to reflect the handbook’s new recommendations.

The cross-cutting need for updated, evidence-based recommendations that are clear–in whatever language providers speak–has resounded since the handbook’s publication.

“Here in Fiji, as medical care givers, we don’t have a library to go to, for reading and researching for new updates of reproductive health issues as well as family planning methods,” registered nurse Salanieta Daveta Seru Cola wrote recently, requesting her own copy.

“I have been longing and interested to have a copy of the new book, the revised version of The Essentials of Contraceptive Technology,” she continued. “I wish to give clients true information, provide treatment and recommendations for common side effects, and supply answers to commonly asked questions about side effects and other health concerns.”