Contagion Calls for Contraception Contingencies

Even as Jhpiego is focused on COVID-19, our field of vision extends beyond the pandemic, past this moment in time. In the midst of this crisis, sex doesn’t stop. Nor do domestic abuse, gender-based violence and child marriage. We know this. We clearly see both the unmet and continuing needs for contraception by women and adolescents. Their health and the wellbeing of their families are a function of their ability to protect themselves against unintended pregnancies.

Not long ago, Ebola threatened to quickly reverse achievements in increasing use of family planning in West Africa. In Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, family planning supplies dwindled and contraceptive choice went by the wayside as the deadly disease spread. Women avoided going to hospitals and clinics, which were viewed as vectors of the disease. Funding dried up for these essential health care services; limited resources were diverted to fight Ebola.

The lessons learned then are guiding us now as we pursue the continuity of safe and trusted high-quality, voluntary family planning services in West Africa and around the world. Here are a few examples of what we’re doing to assure that women and adolescents have what they need during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Guinea is rapidly engaging key stakeholders in the Ministry of Health to minimize disruption of family planning services and sustain their use by a community that trusts the safety and effectiveness of care offered in the public sector. Dr. Yolande Hyjazi, Jhpiego’s country director in Guinea, is leading the national committee advising the government on maintenance of essential services during the country’s crisis response to COVID-19. Jhpiego’s Guinea team also collaborated with the National Community Health Directorate to shape its community engagement and education plans to garner support for the national response to the pandemic.

The Burkina Faso Ministry of Health’s national COVID-19 response committee is focused on keeping family planning and reproductive health services accessible and safe. Jhpiego’s team developed a COVID-19 infection prevention and control guide used to train 4,950 health care workers from 35 health districts. By deploying remote coaching and performance monitoring, we are helping local supervisors maintain availability and quality of family planning care.

In Kenya, Jhpiego’s Advance Family Planning supported and coordinated a virtual stakeholders meeting on the continuity of reproductive, family planning and other essential health services. After mapping the impact of COVID-19 on these services, Jhpiego helped to develop a practical guide to ensure continuation of services for pregnant women, mothers and newborns as well as a compliance approach for enforcing delivery of services. In addition, The Challenge Initiative’s Tupange Pamoja project is working with local partners and youth leaders to distribute contraception commodities to their peers to meet the needs of vulnerable adolescents.

In Tanzania and Zanzibar, Jhpiego’s team on the Boresha Afya Western/Lake Zone Project has partnered with associations of obstetrician-gynecologists, midwives and pediatricians to draft a guide for providers and facilities to safely deliver key essential reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health services. The document is key to the Ministry of Health’s guidance for ensuring that family planning and other critical services can continue and that clients and providers can remain safe.

COVID-19 is crisis enough without it exacerbating a contraception crunch. Its dire consequences will reverberate far into the future if we fail now to support and make available the family planning services that enable women to prevent unintended pregnancies. To learn more, listen as Anne Pfitzer, Family Planning Director, USAID’s MOMENTUM 2A, makes the case for prioritizing postpartum family planning services.

Johns Hopkins University Affiliate

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