Pakistan
We work with provincial governments in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh and support private providers to engage men and women in their reproductive health and ensure high-quality health care for all Pakistanis.
MOMENTUM is partnering with nearly 40 countries to accelerate progress and advance USAID’s work to save lives and improve health outcomes for women, children, families, and communities in all of their diversity. MOMENTUM brings together specialized technical and country expertise through six distinct yet integrated awards with the depth and breadth of experience to spur reductions in maternal, newborn, and child mortality and morbidity.
Two MOMENTUM projects—Country and Global Leadership and Private Healthcare Delivery—work in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh provinces to increase access to high-quality health care and make reproductive health care, information, and services more accessible for men, women, and young people. We collaborate with the provincial government and with private providers to engage young couples who are newly or soon-to-be married and people who influence their decisions, such as mothers-in-law, to increase the use of voluntary family planning.
Helping Private Providers Deliver Client-Centered Reproductive Health Care
Approximately 54 percent of family planning users in Sindh obtain their contraceptive method through the private sector. While men often accompany their partners to medical appointments and influence family planning decisions, information and counseling usually target women, and men often have limited knowledge of and low trust in family planning methods.1 MOMENTUM Private Healthcare Delivery partners with private sector clinics in Sindh to provide gender-inclusive, nonjudgmental health care by training providers to offer family planning services to men, women, and young people that support the use of their method of choice. We hosted a workshop series with 100 male general practitioners working in the private sector to help them better engage their male clients on family planning and reproductive health topics. MOMENTUM has also trained male social mobilizers and family welfare assistants on engaging men in family planning.
Discover the four principles MOMENTUM uses to engage the private sector in health care.
Making Reproductive Health Care More Accessible and Inclusive
In Sindh province, MOMENTUM Private Healthcare Delivery implements gender-transformative approaches to help men, women, and young people make family planning and reproductive health decisions. The project creates communications and digital strategies to bring reproductive health information, options, and resources closer to those who want it. This includes innovations like the VIYA chatbot, which helps engage men as supportive partners in family planning.
MOMENTUM also works with young men and couples early in their family planning decisions. We host family planning sessions at academic institutions and customize materials and resources to help Pakistani youth better understand their family planning options. More than 200 students have attended youth engagement sessions led by MOMENTUM at two universities in Karachi.
Learn more about the VIYA chatbot on our blog.
Reaching Women with High-Quality Postpartum Family Planning
In Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, maternal deaths account for 16 percent of deaths among women of reproductive age.2 Family planning, especially in the postpartum period, can help women plan and space their births for optimal health outcomes. MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership is exploring women’s access to and use of postpartum family planning and supporting the province’s Department of Health and Population Welfare to better integrate their family planning activities across multiple health system levels. MOMENTUM also assists the provincial government to better integrate postpartum family planning into maternal and newborn health care in private and public settings, including by providing mentorship and supportive supervision for providers and health facilities across the province.
MOMENTUM also partners with health facilities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to help them better serve communities with high-quality health care. Using a gender- and disability-inclusive checklist tool, we help facilities improve postpartum family planning counseling and services, make health supplies and equipment for postpartum family planning and infection prevention and control more available, and improve infection prevention and control practices. MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership will lead a technical working group to strengthen the quality of care provided by district and facility health workers, with a particular focus on care for adolescent girls, young women, people with disabilities, and people at high risk for pregnancy complications.
Learn more about MOMENTUM’s Behaviorally Focused Policy Landscape Analysis tool, which we are using to better understand postpartum family planning in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership: Jhpiego, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Department of Health, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Population Welfare Department
MOMENTUM Private Healthcare Delivery: Population Services International (PSI) Pakistan, Population Welfare Department Sindh
Interested in partnering with us or learning more about our work in Pakistan? Contact us here or check out our regional reference brief.
Learn more about USAID’s work in Pakistan.
References
- National Institute of Population Studies (NIPS) [Pakistan] and ICF. 2020. Pakistan Maternal Mortality Survey 2019: Key Indicators Report. Islamabad, Pakistan, and Rockville, Maryland, USA: NIPS and ICF. https://dhsprogram.com/pubs/pdf/PR128/PR128.pdf.
- Population Welfare Department, Government of Sindh. Costed Implementation Plan on Family Planning for Sindh (2015–2020). December 2015. https://fp2030.org/sites/default/files/CIP-Sindh-03-15-16-final-1_0.pdf.
Last updated December 2023.