On June 16, Equipop organized a "workshop to amend the advocacy strategy and action plan" for the task delegation project in Ouagadougou. This project aims to improve family planning services in the health districts of Dandé and Tougan.
The workshop was attended by around thirty participants: the Director of Family Health, the Regional Health Directors of Boucle du Mouhoun and Hauts Bassin, the Chief Medical Officers of the districts of Dandé and Tougan, frontline health workers from both districts, Community-Based Health Workers, Maries Stoppes BF, Equilibres et Populations, Population Council, ABBEF, URCB, BURCASO, and UNFPA.
The advocacy strategy for task delegation was developed following a context analysis conducted at the national, regional, and district levels based on interviews with various stakeholders from the Ministry of Health, international NGOs, national NGOs/associations, and technical and financial partners.
All those present at the workshop to discuss this strategy and its action plan are unanimous on the advocacy objectives. These aim, on the one hand, to encourage the Ministry of Health to revise reproductive health policies, standards, and protocols, as well as the training curricula for frontline health workers, adapting them to the principle of task shifting. On the other hand, they aim to mobilize significant resources for the scaling up of task delegation for the provision of family planning services in Burkina Faso by the end of 2018.
Discussions during the group work led participants to highlight two major needs:
- Review the deadlines for advocacy objectives, given that the process of revising the training curricula for frontline health workers is relatively lengthy.
- Collaborate with the National School of Public Health to set realistic deadlines for revising the training curricula for frontline health workers.
Following this workshop, Equipop will incorporate and validate these amendments. The next step will be to present the strategy and action plan for approval at the national, regional, and local levels. Equilibres et Populations will also oversee the implementation of this action plan, which is scheduled to begin in July 2017.
