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Albania
Albania
Expanding Family Planning Services and Method Choice
Pediatrician visit presents perfect opportunity for FP counseling
Since October 2007, Jhpiego and two of its partners—the Academy for Educational Development and the American College of Nurse-Midwives—have been providing assistance to the Ministry of Health in Albania and other partners under the global ACCESS-FP project. The project aims to strengthen family planning (FP) in the postpartum and postabortion periods, to reinvigorate the provision of IUD services, and to increase demand for modern contraceptives
ACCESS-FP is working in Tirana, Korca and Shkoder, with a programmatic focus on initiating postpartum and postabortion FP services at district maternity hospitals prior to discharge. To ensure the continuity of care, the project is also implementing an innovative approach designed to reach women during their extended postpartum period (12 months) through pediatric services at selected primary health care facilities in the project areas.
Through technical updates tailored to the needs of different health care cadre, and both structured and informal supportive supervision visits, the project works to ensure that service providers on all levels have the knowledge, tools and support necessary to implement changes at their workplace. To stimulate demand for contraceptive services, handouts and posters were developed to inform clients about safe and reliable modern methods, and to stimulate provider-client dialogue about various family planning options.
To supplement and complement these efforts, the project works to disseminate reproductive health information to the communities through articles on postpartum and postabortion contraception in the quarterly reproductive health digest published by the Institute of Public Health (IPH).
To ensure the sustainability of improvements in the providers’ practice, the project has taken a lead in the development of national FP clinical protocols to support the MOH’s reproductive health initiatives. ACCESS-FP is also providing technical assistance to the URC/PRO Shėndetit project in the development of a postpartum care section for the curriculum for primary health care.
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