IntraHealth International has received a five-year grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to increase access to modern family planning methods among Senegal’s urban poor. 

One third of Senegal’s low-income urban women lack access to modern family planning, contributing to the country’s high maternal and newborn mortality rate; 690 out of every 100,000 pregnancies in Senegal end in the mother’s death, and 11% of Senegalese children die before the age of five. The project aims to double access to and use of modern family planning in six Senegalese cities.

IntraHealth will work with Senegal’s Ministry of Health and project partners to:

• Develop cost-effective ways to integrate family planning with current maternal and child health programs
• Work with high-volume urban clinics to improve the quality of their family planning services
• Develop, test, and facilitate partnerships between public and private health care providers to increase access to family planning services
• Increase awareness of and support for family planning services through community-based behavior change communication and advocacy among religious leaders
• Enhance Senegal’s supportive national-level policy environment for family planning activities.

As the project develops, IntraHealth hopes to share new information, resources, and policy ideas to improve family planning access throughout Francophone West Africa.