Maternal and Child Health Program

Speeches Shim

USAID's Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Program is improving women's and children's health by increasing access, availability, and utilization of key health services, as well as strengthening the health system. Specifically, the flagship MCH Program supports innovative approaches to strengthen the capacity of Pakistan's public and private sectors to deliver high-impact health interventions to reduce maternal, newborn, and child mortality and morbidity. The MCH Program has a comprehensive public and private sector approach at both the federal and provincial level, where it is harmonized with Government of Pakistan's Vision 2020 and the Health Sector Strategy of Sindh. 

Objectives

The MCH Program aims to achieve the following objectives:

  • Increase utilization of quality family planning, maternal. neonatal, and child health services
  • Improve nutrition and water, sanitation and hygiene practices
  • Strengthen health system to enable sustainability

Main Activities

  • The Family Planning/Reproductive Health (FP/RH) activity seeks to strengthen the delivery of integrated FP and safe motherhood services to address the unmet need of poor and hard-to-reach communities, builds networks, and strengthens care in the public and private sectors through franchising, voucher systems, and community outreach models.
  • The Maternal Newborn and Child Health (MNCH) Services  activity supports the introduction, scale up, and further development of high-impact and evidence-based MNCH interventions while incorporating birth spacing and family planning services into public and private sector facilities.
  • The Health Communication activity uses commercial marketing techniques and innovative social and behavior change communications strategies to position products and services with messages that increase knowledge, create demand, and promote healthy behaviors.
  • The Health Commodities and Supply Chain activity provides technical assistance to strengthen the government's capacity to estimate its requirement for contraceptive commodities and undertake transparent procurement; and also provides technical assistance to improve and sustain the commodity supply chain management and distribution systems with an emphasis on the logistics management information system.
  • The Health Systems Strengthening activity provides technical assistance to the public health and population sectors to reform and improve service delivery in a post-devolution operating environment by addressing governance, workforce, information systems, and overall financing, while also supporting both supply- and demand-side initiatives and community financing innovations to reduce financial barriers for the poor.
  • Nutrition/ Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene activities seek to decrease stunting by strengthening programs and policy; supporting community-oriented approaches; and improving behaviors and practices.