Background
Dar es Salaam is the most populated city in Tanzania and has a low rate of contraceptive use. Lack of information about family planning, negative attitudes of service providers, cultural and religious beliefs and lack of privacy at the health clinics are a few of the reasons for this. One of the high-risk groups when it comes to unintended pregnancies are postnatal women, i.e. mothers with newborn babies. Misconceptions and lack of information makes it difficult for many women to predict when they start becoming fertile again after giving birth.

About the project
This project was created to increase the use of postnatal family planning at Aga Khan Hospital in Dar es Salaam. The project team trained the hospital staff on postnatal family planning and counselling, gender sensitivity and on how to create a friendly environment for their clients. Family planning education and counselling was given to both pregnant women and couples with newborn babies. In addition to this, the project team used mobile health innovation to register pregnant women and send them free text messages with appointment reminders and information about postnatal family planning.

Results
By the end of the project, 77% of the 536 targeted couples received postnatal family planning counselling, which was a significant increase compared to 10% before the project. 50% of the mothers also brought their partners along to the clinic, compared to 14% before the project, which showed an increase in men’s involvement in family planning decisions. 35 health workers were trained by the project team and are now able to use their boosted capacity to keep ensuring that women and their partners have access to postnatal family planning services and information going forward.

Year: 2104