Primary Health lessons

MSH and USAID/Madagascar Project Begins to Increase Community-Based Primary Health Care Services

October 08, 2013

Photo credit: Lisa Folda, Courtesy of Photoshare

Management Sciences for Health (MSH) is pleased to announce the start of a new project in Madagascar with USAID/Madagascar, The USAID Primary Health Care (PHC) project. PHC is  a five-year initiative to increase community-based primary health care service uptake and the adoption of healthy behaviors, particularly for women of reproductive age, infants, and children under five.  The project will focus its efforts in six of Madagascar’s 22 regions, where access to and quality of primary health care services is limited. The six regions cover a total population of 5.5 million people, of whom more than 60 percent live more than five kilometers from the nearest health center.     

In these regions, limited access to quality services is a major impediment to service uptake and health improvements. The USAID PHC project will utilize and build upon USAID/Madagascar’s investments in health over the past 20 years and work with local NGOs and community health volunteers to reach vulnerable communities with basic, quality health services and behavior change communication for family planning and reproductive health, maternal, newborn and child health, and malaria.    

USAID PHC will strengthen and expand integrated community-based service delivery and support capacity and systems development for local NGOs and communities to sustain these services. The project will generate awareness and use of health services in 506 communes and will contribute to the achievement of the maternal and child health Millennium Development Goals, as well as addressing gender- and youth-specific health needs.

The USAID PHC project started in Madagascar on  August 1, 2013 and is implemented by Management Sciences for Health with international partners, Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and Overseas Strategic Consulting, Ltd. (OSC), and Malagasy partners, Action Socio-sanitaire Organisation Secours (ASOS) and Institut Technologique de l’Education et du Management(ITEM).