MOMENTUM Integrated Health Resilience works with local organizations and leaders in North Kivu to adapt family planning interventions and messaging to minimize barriers to local service delivery often rooted in harmful gender norms. At health facilities, we help increase providers’ knowledge and skills and their understanding of a broader range of contraceptive methods, especially long-acting reversible contraceptives. Within the community, trained community health workers are mentored and supervised to deliver community-based contraceptive services, including counseling and self-administered contraceptives like Sayana Press. We also support providers to deliver high-quality counseling, address biases, and adolescent-responsive care.

MOMENTUM Safe Surgery in Family Planning and Obstetrics helps provide respectful, holistic maternity care, including safe surgeries, in the DRC. We collaborate with our partners to reach adolescents, youth, and postpartum and post-abortion women in Kinshasa with long-acting reversible contraception and permanent methods of contraception and to integrate family planning into fistula prevention activities. Additionally, we partner with providers in North Kivu, South Kivu, and Ituri provinces to strengthen their ability to provide counseling and family planning methods that work best for each of their clients. We also partner with local organizations and health providers to increase the availability of and access to a broad range of contraceptive methods.

Check out this collection of 20 essential resources for family planning and reproductive health in fragile settings curated by MOMENTUM Integrated Health Resilience.

Conflict, natural disasters, Ebola outbreaks, the COVID-19 pandemic, and other disease outbreaks have repeatedly disrupted access to and the delivery of essential health services in North Kivu. MOMENTUM Integrated Health Resilience helps strengthen the capacity of the DRC’s health system to deliver maternal, newborn, and child health services, helping to sustainably transition the country away from humanitarian assistance. In North Kivu, MOMENTUM collaborates closely with the national and provincial Ministry of Health, international partners, local NGOs, United Nations agencies, and other USAID-funded projects to mobilize community and health facility support to improve and strengthen community health services.

For example, we convene representatives from health facilities, community structures, and NGOs to assess health priorities and trends and create action plans to address these needs. Community health workers who collaborate with MOMENTUM also conduct regular household visits to provide health messaging, identify health needs, and make referrals to local health facilities. MOMENTUM also assists the Ministry of Health in running Integrated Community Case Management sites to bring care closer to children under five. MOMENTUM staff meet regularly with community health workers to discuss their activities and reflect on lessons learned from their experiences. MOMENTUM bolsters partners’ efforts to improve primary health care messaging, referrals, and reporting through these meetings.

We also work with partners to provide a steady supply of quality medications, basic personal protective equipment, and other health products for women, children, and communities in North Kivu.

The DRC is one of the most vulnerable countries to vaccine-preventable diseases; only 35 percent of children under age two are fully vaccinated against preventable childhood diseases.³ MOMENTUM Routine Immunization Transformation and Equity partners with the government to implement the Mashako Plan, which aims to increase immunization coverage nationwide by 15 points. As part of our work, we collaborate with local and private sector organizations in Haut-Katanga, Kasaï-Central, Kasaï-Oriental, and Lualaba Provinces to address persistent barriers to equitable immunization coverage and identify high-potential interventions and strategies to overcome these barriers.

MOMENTUM is also working with the DRC’s Ministry of Health to reach children with routine vaccinations, especially those who missed their vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic and other shocks, using the World Health Organization’s Reaching Every District/Reaching Every Child approach. This includes supporting the DRC’s Expanded Program on Immunization to plan for potential shocks and stressors that may disrupt immunization access.

Read how we’re helping children access the vital vaccines they need. 

The private sector is an integral part of the DRC’s health system,⁴ but little is known about the cost of private health care delivery. This information gap makes it challenging for leaders to make informed decisions about allocating resources within the health system. MOMENTUM Private Healthcare Delivery conducted a study to understand the difference between costs in the private and public sectors, especially the cost of family planning services, in Kinshasa and its surrounding areas. The study explored the differences in prices paid for commodities, health staff salaries, supplies and equipment, and other costs related to family planning and maternal health services across public and private sectors. The study’s results will help stakeholders in DRC’s public sector make informed decisions about purchasing family planning and maternal health services in the private sector.