Many of you met in Ougadougou, Burkina Faso, from March 12–17, 1995, for a very
significant conference called the Regional Conference on Increasing Access and Improving
the Quality of Family Planning and Selected Reproductive Health Services in Francophone
Sub-Saharan Africa.1 During the six days of the conference,
126 participants—including health professionals, jurists, government agency
representatives, population experts, journalists, religious leaders, representatives of
women’s groups and sociologists—attended sessions to update knowledge on
contraceptive methods and to address laws, practices and protocols that create barriers to
access and quality of reproductive health (RH) services. You shared information and openly
discussed issues of gender, harmful traditional practices, sexually transmitted diseases
(STDs) and AIDS. Delegates from 10 francophone Africa countries—Benin, Burkina Faso,
Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Madagascar, Mali, Niger, Senegal and
Togo—returned home with draft action plans that outlined practical strategies that
would improve selected RH and family planning (FP) services in their home countries.
West Africa has been and continues to be a leader in the initiative to increase
contraceptive range and access. For example, Senegal and Mali introduced Norplant®
implants as an available method and increased its accessibility by permitting midwives, as
well as physicians, to insert and remove the implants. Mali was a ground breaker in
increasing adolescents’ access to contraception by allowing this age group to use
Norplant implants—provided they were counseled. You and your colleagues have reached
many milestones toward increasing access to contraception and improving the quality of RH
care in your region. Cameroon, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Senegal and Togo have developed or
updated their reproductive health service delivery guidelines. In addition, Benin has
committed resources to update its guidelines. In October 1995, an infection prevention
(IP) conference—the first of its kind in West Africa—sensitized decision makers
and key service providers to the importance of IP in RH/FP service delivery and set in
action national IP policies that will be implemented in Guinea, Mali, Niger and Senegal.
Mali Hosts IP
Conference, First of Its Kind in West Africa: Members of the Niger delegation
(Mlle Mariama Amadou, Dr. Maimouna Kane, Mlle Agak Fatima Male, Prof. Hamadou Ousseini and
Prof. Alio Sabo) meet to develop a policy document for infection prevention. Also pictured
is Dr. Seydou Ousmane Diallo, representative from the World Health Organization in Mali.
The purpose of this Bulletin is to document these achievements, to disseminate your
success stories so that others may benefit from the progress you have made, to provide you
with contraceptive technology updates, and to lend encouragement as you continue your
efforts to increase access to contraception and improve the quality of RH care. We are
very pleased to send you this first of three issues of the French version of the
Maximizing Access and Quality (MAQ) Bulletin. We hope you will make this your bulletin.
Your suggestions for future Bulletin articles are most welcome.
Sandra de Castro Buffington, Chair
JHPIEGO MAQ Task Force
1 This conference was organized by FHI, JHPIEGO and
INTRAH. For copies of the conference proceedings, please contact FHI (Family Health
International), PO Box 13950, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, 27709 USA. Fax:
(919) 544-7261.
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This bulletin was produced by JHPIEGO, an affiliate of Johns Hopkins University.
JHPIEGO, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the health of women and families
in developing countries, works to increase the number of qualified health professionals
trained in modern reproductive health care, especially family planning.
The MAQ Followup Questionnaire Results article was contributed by
INTRAH (Program for International Training in Health). INTRAH is a nonprofit organization
whose mission is to assist countries in various stages of development transition to
improve the development and delivery of essential reproductive health services through
better preparation and utilization of human resources. Financial support for this
publication was provided in part by the United States Agency for International Development
(USAID). The views expressed in this bulletin are those of the editors/contributors and do
not necessarily reflect those of USAID.
Credits
Senior Editor: Sandra de Castro Buffington
Writer/Editor: Chris Davis
Technical Editors: Noel McIntosh, Willibrord Shasha
Production Editor: Holly Simmons
Contributors: INTRAH, Natalie Maier, Anne Pfitzer, Susi Wyss
Translation: Linda Benamor, Frances Kleeman, Eliane Lanusse-Nalls
Logo: Courtesy of Johns Hopkins University/Population Communication
Services
Photos: Teresa McInerney, Anne Pfitzer |
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