ESD in Yemen
Scaling-up RH/FP Best Practices

In September 2007, ESD organized a technical meeting for 13 countries in Bangkok. The meeting’s purpose was to share state of the art FP/MNCH best practices among participants and encourage them to initiate some of the relevant practices in their countries as a first step to national scaling up. Each country team selected one or more best practices for this purpose. ESD assisted some of the country teams in introducing those best practices through small grants and technical assistance.

The Yemeni team selected the following five best practices to be introduced in the main teaching/public sector maternity hospital in Sana’a, Al-Sabeen Hospital:

1. Postpartum family planning/HTSP counseling and services
2. Providing women after delivery with Vitamin A according to WHO standards for countries with widespread Vitamin A deficiency
3. Introducing Kangaroo Mother Care to premature neonates
4. Immediate and exclusive breast feeding
5. Infection control in the neonatal and delivery wards

With ESD’s help of a $50,000 grant and technical assistance, BHS developed standards and guidelines for the above best practices, assisted the MOHP in conducting the needed training for Al-Sabeen staff and helped implement those best practices.

Results were impressive; six months after the launch of the program, postpartum counseling for FP increased from 0 to 23%; Vitamin A provision to women after delivery rose from 0 to 97%; immediate breast feeding rose from 15 to 79%; and infection control standards were introduced to the nursery and delivery room.

Based on those results, BHS and the MOHP plan to expand the intervention to six major maternity hospitals in the districts of Amran, Sa’ada, Aden, Taiz, Lahej, and Ibb.  ESD provided a $75,000 grant to assist in this effort. In addition, ESD provided training in the improvement collaborative approach, adapted from URC, to the hospital teams. This approach introduces quality improvement methodologies, trains the teams in introducing the best practices standards, protocols and indicators to their sites and encourages quick spread of innovations to national levels through sharing successes, barriers, system changes and data on regular basis.