Tanzania
We work with the Government of Tanzania to train health workers, improve childhood immunization rates, promote healthy behaviors that lead to better outcomes for families and the environment, and assess the cost of family planning for Tanzanians.
MOMENTUM partners with the Government of Tanzania as it continues to work to improve the health of Tanzanians, particularly women and children. We help the Tanzanian Ministry of Health to train new providers on maternal, newborn, and child health, voluntary family planning, and reproductive health services and to reach every child with routine vaccinations. We are also conducting a study to compare the costs of care in the private sector, where many Tanzanians receive health products and services, to the costs of those services in the public sector.
We are also forging multisectoral partnerships to address Tanzania’s conservation issues and overall health by promoting behaviors that lead to better outcomes for families and the environment, including using latrines properly, managing livestock, and practicing food safety. MOMENTUM also convenes peer groups to improve first-time parents’ knowledge, attitudes, care seeking, and self-care practices.
Integrating Health and Conservation Efforts
In Tanzania’s conservation zones—the Greater Mahale Ecosystem and Northern Tanzania Rangelands—the health and well-being of people and the environment are intricately linked. MOMENTUM Integrated Health Resilience is forging partnerships that link family planning, conservation, and overall health in these two zones. MOMENTUM works with community leaders, community health workers, population health and environment champions, and households—or bomas—to promote behaviors that lead to better outcomes for families and the environment. These behaviors include using latrines, mosquito nets, and energy-saving stoves, as well as hand-washing, boiling or treating drinking water, managing livestock, and using climate-smart agriculture and food practices that ensure families have sufficient food. In collaboration with conservation partners, MOMENTUM helps integrate family planning; maternal, newborn, and child health care; and other health messages into conservation activities, such as village game scouts management, women’s leadership and rights forums, rangelands management, carbon offset, tree planting, and beekeeping.
MOMENTUM also works with Community Conservation Microfinance Groups (CCMGs) to increase individuals’ and communities’ access to small-scale loans to implement environmentally-friendly income-generating activities, such as beekeeping, selling crops or domestic animals, and owning small shops. These activities promote best practices within these communities by helping community members understand the interconnected relationship between their health and their environment.
Meet Neemaeli Saitore, a community health worker with MOMENTUM Integrated Health Resilience in Tanzania’s Monduli district.
Investing in First-Time Parents
First-time parents are often an overlooked subset of youth. In the regions of Kigoma and Katavi, MOMENTUM Integrated Health Resilience convenes first-time parent peer groups—and smaller groups such as mothers and mothers-in-law—to improve knowledge, attitudes, care seeking, and self-care practices related to maternal, newborn, and child health. First-time parents receive information and share experiences related to family planning, maternal and newborn health, and positive population, health, and environment practices and are referred to community health workers and health facilities for services.
Read more about how we’re working with first-time fathers in Tanzania, like 28-year-old farmer Maliki Andrew, to help them support their partners.
Investing in a Skilled Health Workforce
A skilled health workforce is essential for quality care and sustainable health service delivery. MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership partners with Tanzania’s Ministry of Health to strengthen institutions at the national, zonal, and health institution levels to train providers on technical skills before they enter the workforce. We complement these activities by strengthening the training skills of clinical tutors, instructors, and preceptors. In partnership with health training institutions, we help to integrate continuous quality improvement training into their courses, invest in their trainees’ clinical skills, and develop systems to track program graduates. We also work with local resource centers to build capacity to provide continuing education for health workers.
Reaching Every Child with Routine Immunizations
In Tanzania’s Mara, Kagera, Morogoro, Pwani, and Zanzibar regions, where routine immunization rates are low, MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership bolsters local efforts to improve immunization rates, especially for children who have not received even a single dose of the vaccine for diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis. We partner with local governments in these five regions to plan and implement the Reaching Every District/Reaching Every Child1 approach, designed by the World Health Organization to improve immunization services in areas with low coverage. We partner with local implementers using a human-centered design approach to tailor interventions to each specific context. We also help these implementers use data to manage and adapt their programs to improve routine immunization access and uptake in hard-to-reach communities.
Learn how we’ve helped Tanzania’s Morogoro region become one of the top five regions in the country for routine childhood immunizations.
Understanding the Cost of Private and Public Health Care
In Tanzania, more than one in three women currently using modern contraception received their most recent family planning method or information from the private sector.2 Little is known about the cost of private health care delivery in the country, making it difficult for decision-makers to allocate resources effectively within the health system. MOMENTUM Private Healthcare Delivery is conducting a study comparing family planning service costs in the private and public sectors so that publicly funded health programs can decide how to best include private providers.
MOMENTUM Integrated Health Resilience: Government of Tanzania (regional government offices in Kigoma and Katavi (Western Tanzania) and Arusha and Manyara and the Local Government Authorities (LGAs) of the districts of Tanganyika, Uvinza, Monduli, Simanjiro, Babati, and Kiteto); The Nature Conservancy; Tanzania National Parks Authority; Amref Health Africa; Tanzania Health Promotion Support; Jane Goodall Institute; Northern Tanzania Rangelands Initiative
MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership: Jhpiego; Johns Hopkins International Vaccine Access Center
Interested in partnering with us or learning more about our work in Tanzania? Contact us here or check out our regional reference brief.
Learn more about USAID’s programs in Tanzania.
References
- WHO Africa. Reaching Every District (RED): A Guide to Increasing Coverage and Equity in All Communities in the African Region. 2017. https://www.afro.who.int/publications/reaching-every-district-red-guide-increasing-coverage-and-equity-all-communities.
- Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly and Children – MoHCDGEC/Tanzania Mainland, Ministry of Health – MoH/Zanzibar, National Bureau of Statistics – NBS/Tanzania, Office of Chief Government Statistician – OCGS/Zanzibar, and ICF. 2016. Tanzania Demographic and Health Survey and Malaria Indicator Survey (TDHS-MIS) 2015-16. Dar es Salaam/Tanzania: MoHCDGEC, MoH, NBS, OCGS, and ICF.
Last updated September 2022.