Merck for Mothers has made significant progress on a number of fronts:
Scaling up a new supply chain model to expand access to family planning – a powerful tool to prevent maternal and newborn deaths
- Merck for Mothers and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have formed an eight-year, $50 million collaboration to expand access to family planning. As part of this commitment, we have launched our first project in partnership with IntraHealth International and the Senegalese Ministry of Health and Social Action to support the expansion of an innovative distribution model which uses incentives to ensure the availability of contraceptive supplies at public health facilities across the country. This three-year partnership is strengthening the supply chain for family planning products and supporting the government’s family planning goals to increase the contraceptive prevalence rate from 12.3% to 27%.
- The project is a phased national expansion of a novel supply chain model designed to ensure a reliable supply of family planning products at government-operated health facilities in Senegal. A pilot of this model conducted in two Senegalese districts (with 40 health facilities) in 2012 succeeded in reducing stock out rates to less than 2% of facilities and increasing utilization by 38%. Eight of 14 regions and 1,000 health facilities are currently participating in the expansion. In addition to providing financial support for the project, Merck’s experts in health economics and supply chain are analyzing the cost-effectiveness of this novel and providing technical assistance on supply chain integration for other products (e.g., malaria and tuberculosis medicines) into the model to support the Government of Senegal’s capacity building efforts and ensure program sustainability.
Supporting 7 additional projects that are responsive to local maternal health and family planning needs.
Merck for Mothers is integrating postpartum family planning services into its maternal health programs to help women space their pregnancies.
- In Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand, India, MSD for Mothers and Jhpiego are developing training curricula to strengthen the capacity of private providers to integrate postpartum family planning into their maternal care
- In Uttar Pradesh, India, MSD for Mothers has partnered with Pathfinder and World Health Partners to integrate family planning services through telemedicine across the Sky Network of social franchise clinics
- In Rajasthan, India, MSD for Mothers has partnered with Hindustan Latex and Family Planning Promotion Trust to train franchised providers to provide comprehensive maternal health and family planning services
- In Uganda, MSD for Mothers has provided an independent grant to PACE – the local Population Services International affiliate – to train ProFam franchise network providers to deliver postpartum family planning alongside maternal health services
Merck for Mothers is focused on broadening the range of service delivery points that offer a mix of family planning options and quality, client-centered care.
- In Rajasthan, India, MSD for Mothers and Hindustan Latex and Family Planning Promotion Trust are growing a network of community health workers to help increase access to maternal health services and family planning products for low-income women in urban and rural areas.
The Merck for Mothers Global Giving Program was designed to amplify the reach of the Merck for Mothers initiative and engage MSD offices around the world by supporting local projects to improve maternal health and access to family planning.
- In Indonesia - educating women who work in factories about family planning and maternal health and linking them to external health services
- In South Africa - accelerating access to high impact interventions through capacity-building of national and provincial governments and PHC outreach teams to integrate family planning services
