USAID Supports Wide Choice of Family Planning Methods
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Kigali, Rwanda│Thursday, February 15, 2007
In light of the current attention being paid to on the issue of family planning in Rwanda, this article details the partnership between the Government of Rwanda (GOR) and the U.S. Government (USG) to make quality family planning services more available throughout the country.
Through USAID, the American people currently provide more than $6 million a year to Rwanda through both the government and private sector in support of the GOR’s national family planning strategy. USAID/Rwanda Director Kevin J. Mullally says the U.S. foreign assistance agency wants to be sure Rwandans have healthy families by spacing or limiting their children in the way that’s best for their family’s needs.
“By spacing births a few years apart instead of having one child very soon after the last,” Mullally explained, “both mothers and children stand a much, much better chance of not only surviving but being stronger and healthier. This is something we all want for our children!
“Our commitment is to provide affordable – and in most cases, free – services, a range of family planning methods, and informed and free choice,” he continued. “Both men and women need options because what works for one family, does not always work for another. Through the activities we fund, our partners are integrating family planning into both clinical and community health services, and we’re finding that where there are more and better quality services, demand is actually very high.”
According to the 2005 Rwanda Demographic and Health Study, only 10% of Rwandan women use a modern contraceptive. However, 87% of all women (and 59% of male spouses) surveyed say they approve of family planning, and 6 out of 10 women say they hope to use some form of contraceptive in the future.
USAID/Rwanda supports the activities of its local partner organizations – PSI, IntraHealth/ Capacity Project, Intrahealth/Twubakane, John Snow, Inc. and others – in three main areas: training health providers throughout the country to offer a range of quality family planning services; making the population of Rwanda aware of the importance of family planning and creating demand in the community for the services; and 3) purchasing family planning commodities to ensure that health facilities are adequately stocked. These USG-supplied commodities include a wide variety of methods such as condoms, oral contraceptives (“the pill”), injectables (Depo-Provera), implants, and intra-uterine devices; and training and equipment for the permanent methods of tubal ligation and vasectomy.
Other USAID-funded activities include technical assistance to the GOR in developing its national family planning strategy; incorporating family planning into the decentralization of the health sector; analyzing and quantifying the national need for commodities and supplies; giving service providers with the tools they need to do the job, such as kits, charts, and facility rehabilitation; and “social marketing”, which focuses on sensitizing the population to the advantages of smaller, more manageable, healthier families and providing products through the private sector.
USAID works with the United Nations Family Planning Association (UNFPA), the German development agency, GTZ, KFW, and many other national and international partners to make family planning a high quality service accessible to all Rwandans.
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