The Iraqi Ministry of Health and the Regional Ministry of Health of Kurdistan have organized series of consultative meetings and workshops in Erbil during April and May 2014, for the purpose of monitoring, strengthening and scaling up Family Planning Services. These meetings and workshops were technically supported by WHO and UNFPA and were attended by FP program managers, researchers from Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) and from the Iraqi Reproductive Health and Family Planning Association (IRHFPA). During these workshops the participants conducted situation analysis at 5 levels: policies, inputs, services delivery, outputs and outcomes.
The MDG5-B showed that Family Planning (FP) services in Iraq need more efforts to be improved, as the indicators are: Modern Contraceptive Prevalence Rate 28% (2011), unmet needs 22%, Adolescents Birth Rate 60 % andunwanted pregnancies 12%. In this context the Total Fertility Rate is 4.6 live births per woman and population growth Rate 3%.
It’s clear the above indicators negatively affecting the women and family health and the also development plans.
It worth to mention that the political sides in Iraq have taken series of steps to support this program, including the launching of a new Population Policy (April 2014), with the support from UNFPA, and including Reproductive Health and FP parts in the National Development Plan (2013-2017).
The proposed plan will also integrate the Maternal and Child Health acceleration plan (2013-2015) with prioritizing 9 governorates and the reproductive health national strategy (2013-2017).
During these workshops a new plan of action was made for the years 2014-2017 with a clear outputs, indicators and activities for each level mentioned above and based on the concept of human right and women and family right.
The participants focused on filling the important gaps especially to secure family planning commodities, capacity building of health providers, strengthen the health information system including Logistical Information System and raising awareness for the underserved populations.
Main Outputs of the Workshops:
- Plan to scaling up the FP services in the PHC centers (from 300 at 2014 to 900 at 2017).
- The participants did Forecasting exercise for FP commodities at the national level which was estimated around 2Million $ per year, and the forecasting exercise will be conducted at the level of all governorates.
- A detailed plan was developed for capacity building of health providers and estimated to train 1200 medical and nursing staff during 2014-2017.
- A modified FP Information System and logistical management information system (LMIS) was adopted and shall be launched to all governorates to enable monitoring of the program.
The main indicators that this plan will contribute to achieve by 2017 are:
- Increase modern Contraceptive Prevalence Rate (Modern methods) from 28% (2011) to 60%
- Reduce the unmet needs for Family Planning from 22% to less than 5%
- The unwanted pregnancies from 12% to less than 5%
- Reduce the abortion and miscarriages rates from 24% to less than 10%.
- Reduce the Adolescent Pregnancy rate from 60 per thousands to less than 30 per thousand
- Adopting Healthy Spacing between Births
*All the mentioned indicators are from 2011 surveys
It is worth to mention here that achieving these health and developmental objectives could be achieved with the available and reasonable financial resources while they need a strong political support from MOH and other partners.
Finally it was agreed that the process of implementation, support and monitoring shall be via supreme and technical committees. During the next weeks, the technical committee will continue in-depth consultations to develop implementations modalities especially at the governorate level.
Lastly this plan of action and its implementation modalities shall be discussed with the supreme ministerial committee for validation and support. It’s proposed to organize this high level meeting at August 2014.
