Côte d'Ivoire Issues Memo to Scale Up Postpartum Family Planning
April 29, 2017
On April 28, 2017, Prof. Dagnan N'Cho Simplice, the Director General of Health with the Ministry of Health and Public Hygiene in Côte d'Ivoire, issued a memorandum to scale up postpartum family planning in public and private health centers. The memo calls for health facilities and qualified service providers to inform new mothers of the full range of family planning methods available to them to ensure free and informed choice of options immediately following delivery.
This effort falls under the leadership of the Coordinating Directorate of the National Program for Mother and Child Health, which has been working with stakeholders to increase women's access to family planning services in Côte d'Ivoire in public and private health centers by December 2017. The memorandum came as a result from a series of meetings with key advocates and stakeholders from FP2020, the United Nations Population Fund, the West African Health Organization (WAHO), the AgirPF project, Médecins du Monde, AIBEF, SOGOCI, and the Health Policy Plus (HP+) project.
HP+, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Advance Family Planning SMART toolsWAHO, provided guidance and capacity development for advocates in family planning and health financing using the Advance Family Planning SMART tools.
An evaluation of the scale up will be carried out to measure the impact of immediate postpartum family planning after delivery in health facilities.
