SCIENTIFIC PANEL

OVERCOMING FAMILY PLANNING DELIVERY CHALLENGES DURING COVID-19: WHAT’S WORKING IN COUNTRIES

The COVID-19 pandemic has placed substantial strain on health systems across the globe. Competing health priorities, service disruptions, stockouts, and lockdowns have interrupted the provision of voluntary family planning and reproductive health care, potentially undermining hard-won gains in availability, accessibility, and equity, with calamitous impacts on maternal, adolescent, newborn, and child health.

This panel brings together four concrete examples from across the globe of how governments, civil society, and private sector are responding to these challenges of COVID-19, employing evidence-based family planning practices and policies, and advancing innovations to ensure that current and new family planning users continue to have access to a wide range of voluntary contraceptive methods and quality information and services.

The four presentations cover a continuum of service delivery challenges and interventions to overcome these. Each presenter will define the specific challenge presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, the health and development rationale for the intervention, and impacts of the intervention, as well as highlight lessons learned, opportunities to improve interventions, and opportunities for scaling-up and South-South exchange of experiences.

Panel Overall Objective
The objective of this panel is to share evidence-based solutions to COVID-related disruptions in FP/RH service delivery, including within supply chains and service delivery channels, and distill potential policy and/or programmatic solutions that can be applied and/or scaled up in multiple settings.

Presentations
Dr. Tamima Rashid Al Dughaishi, President and Founder of Oman Society of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Oman
Supportive policies for alternative service delivery: telecounselling with remote prescriptions in Oman

Dr. Tabinda Sarosh, Country Director for Pakistan, Pathfinder International, Pakistan
Alternate family planning care pathways: digital supportive supervision and mentorship model to ensure quality of FP service, Pakistan

George William Barigye, Regional Technical Advisor, Access Collaborative Project at PATH, Kampala
Innovations in self-care: lessons learned from applying virtual tools and approaches for increasing client self-injection of DMPA-SC in DRC, Madagascar, Senegal, and Uganda: George Barigye, Regional Technical Advisor for the DMPA-SC Access Collaborative, PATH, Kampala

Dr. Isseu Diop Touré, Chief of Party, SHOPS Plus Senegal, Senegal
Experience of facilitating private sector inclusion in the COVID-19 response private sector task forces.

MODERATOR: Prof. Anthony Mbonye