Join FP2020 by Making a Commitment

The government of Lao commits to scale up family planning services to health center and village levels to increase the access to reproductive health and information for adolescents, aiming to boost the number of women using family planning services. Key interventions planned include:

• Extending the training of existing community midwife students by a month to become proficient in family planning counselling and procedures (IUDs, implants, emergency contraceptive);
• Establishing separate private, family planning-friendly rooms in selected district hospitals;
• Increasing the coverage of family planning and maternal, neonatal, and child health services at the community level through the scaling up of existing, successful community-based interventions, such as the Community-Based Distribution Programme;
• Mapping and focusing on high-burden districts and villages, with total fertility rate greater than 3, unmet need greater than 15 percent or 20 percent, and CPR between 35 percent or 45 percent;
• Conduct formative research to inform the development and adaptation and field-testing of IEC materials in local ethnic languages; and
• Pilot youth-friendly service counselling rooms—separate from the maternal, neonatal, and child health unit—and in selected district hospitals.

The Ministry of Health will undertake the revision of the Reproductive Health Policy to promote an enabling environment for family planning and to design services to support reproductive rights and to improve the sexual and reproductive health of men, women, and adolescents. The Lao 8^th Five Year Plan also focuses on reproductive health and the government envisions the full delivery of family planning services in the private sector, including IUD and implant services in private clinics, through the adoption of supportive policies under the revision of Health Care Law. In addition, the government commits to developing an national information, education, and communication (IEC) and behavior change communication (BCC) strategy on family planning—based on the national communication IEC/BCC for health strategy.