Public Official Support for FP | A member of the county assembly in Murang'a County, Kenya, encouraged women at a rally to have children and offered payment to the pregnant women there. A religious leader FP champion met with the county assembly member and ensured that the county assembly member understood the importance of FP for healthy timing and spacing of children. Since then, the county assembly member was supportive of FP; he stopped offering money and encouraged people to have children they are able to provide for. In Zambia, at a national religious leader meeting on FP, the religious leaders urged the MOH to increase public financing for FP as opposed to being heavily dependent on external donors. The MOH recognizes the church and FBOs as strategic allies in ensuring a healthy population who should be included in a coalition to ensure they provide services that leave no one behind and achieve Universal Health Coverage.24 |
Commitment to Increasing Funding and Developing FP Costed Implementation Plans | With the county staff of Murang'a and Kiambu Counties in Kenya, CHAK conducted budget analyses, which highlighted the gaps in FP programming and what the counties could do to respond. CHAK worked with Murang'a County to develop the first-ever 5-year FP CIP in 2020, which was launched in December 2020. CHAK plans to work with the Kiambu County government to develop their FP costed implementation plan in 2021, dependent upon how COVID-19 affects staff availability toward this effort. In Meru County, Kenya, CHAK worked with others to successfully advocate to create an FP costed implementation plan, which was launched in 2018. The religious leaders continued to advocate for FP and implementation of the CIPs and for support to faith-based health facilities. The head of the Meru County, Kenya Executive Committee for Health praised the religious leaders for their work on FP and promised the county's support of FP, highlighting the importance of religious leader influence and connections. After a FP meeting attended by religious leaders and the MOH, the government of Zambia committed to increasing domestic financing, ensuring that, by 2020, its domestic contribution to FP commodities had increased to a minimum of $US1.5 million. Previously, there had been a FP line in the budget, but no funding in it. In 2017, there was a release of $US1.4 million and a release of $US2.6 million in 2018. As an indication of the need for continued advocacy and accountability, there was no release in 2019. There was also advocacy and agreement to a $US500,000 allocation for commodities. |
Supply Chain Improvements for Health Facilities | Meetings between religious leaders and public officials in the 3 focus counties in Kenya resulted in verbal commitments that the MOH would help FBO facilities with contraceptive stock-outs and supply chain challenges and maintain support supervision for FP in 33 FBO health facilities in the 3 counties. FP commodities and supplies were distributed from the county stores to the FBO health facilities faster and quantities ordered were more accurate. Survey results from the 33 facilities in the 3 focus counties in Kenya in 2014 and 2017 provide an indication of the effects of the advocacy by religious leaders on FBO-run health facilities over the first 3 years of the project. Through the advocacy by religious leaders to the county governments through the CHMT, the FBO facilities have continued to receive FP commodities, with greatly reduced stock-outs in those facilities: in 2014, 40% of the facilities surveyed reported having difficulty getting FP commodities from the government, compared to 0% in 2017. Nearly all (97%) facilities reported stock-outs in 2014, compared to 20% in 2017. Advocacy with the county governments to print new FP guidelines was also successful. In 2017, the lowest level of health facilities surveyed had at least 1 copy of the FP guideline while health centers and hospitals had at least 3 copies (unpublished report). |