Philippines

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Preventing unwanted pregnancies and protecting moms and babies since 1980

  • With COVID-19 threatening to stall many essential services, Jhpiego supported rural health units to continue to provide services for sexual and reproductive health and rights, in part by procuring progestin-only subdermal implants (PSIs) and condoms, as well as personal protective equipment for health service providers conducting house-to-house visits to distribute the commodities. As of 31 May 2022, more than 33,286 boxes of condoms were dispensed and more than 2,600 PSIs were inserted for clients who wanted them.
  • The National Reproductive Health/Family Planning Guidelines, which Jhpiego helped develop, are still being used by family planning providers to offer standardized services to clients across the Philippines.
  • Since the start of the Sexual Health and Empowerment (SHE) project, it has reached more than 4,600 women, as well as 195 men, 99 girls and 43 boys through family planning outreach and practicum service provision during training of health providers. The project also helped refurbish 16 facilities to be adolescent-friendly.
  • The SHE project provided Gender Transformation for Health training to 387 service providers (84% of which are women) for gender-responsive and youth-friendly service delivery. Based on assessments using the Gender Service Delivery Standards Tool, 16 out of 20 assessed facilities met at least 80% of standards for youth-friendly and gender-sensitive services.

Our Work in Philippines

This project, led by Oxfam Canada and funded by Global Affairs Canada, seeks to improve sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) for women and girls in six underserved, conflict-affected and disadvantaged regions of Philippines. To reach this goal, the project is providing the target population with culturally- and gender-sensitive sexual and reproductive health programs and services, and improving the effectiveness of women’s rights organizations to advance SRHR and prevent gender-based violence (GBV). As a technical partner, Jhpiego is improving the capacity of the public and private health system to provide comprehensive and gender-responsive SRHR information and services. This includes: training health service providers, enhancing youth-friendly and gender-responsive health facilities to provide comprehensive SRHR services, and enhancing the management and coordination for SRHR and GBV services.

Unitaid is funding a consortium, led by Expertise France, that seeks to eliminate cervical cancer in Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guatemala and the Philippines through secondary prevention (i.e., detecting disease early to slow or halt its progress). The three-year SUCCESS project is designed to shift the countries from a largely opportunistic cervical cancer screening model to a systematic approach centered on innovations related to: 1) reinforced and simplified cervical cancer screening through the introduction of human papilloma virus (HPV) testing with self-collection sampling; 2) secondary prevention of cervical cancer including use of efficient methods for treatment of cervical precancerous lesions such as thermal ablation; and 3) intensified dissemination of information on cervical cancer and new preventive technologies. In so doing, SUCCESS aims to support countries to “leapfrog” to a state-of-the-art services model recommended by the World Health Organization. As the implementing partner of the consortium, Jhpiego is integrating and expanding cervical cancer prevention and treatment services into both new and existing platforms, relying on our established relationships with governments and stakeholders in all four countries. Through demand-generation and community engagement activities, the project plans to screen a total of 185,000 women, a significant proportion of whom will be women living with HIV.

The purpose of the project is to reduce maternal mortality by improving the quality of maternal health care within networked facilities in Sorsogon Province. To achieve this, Jhpiego is operationalizing quality systems for maternal health services in 18 public and private health facilities in one district, and establishing collaborative, effective and efficient referral networks among those health facilities to serve as models for other districts and provinces. The project team convenes leadership and staff in each facility to reach consensus on a facility-wide vision for quality improvement, generating a shared vision to nurture a culture of respect and quality. At each health facility, the project team provides technical assistance to strengthen emergency response and build capacity in meaningful data use for maternal health. In close collaboration with local government unit partners, Jhpiego is establishing referral networks in one district. This award is a joint investment from MSD Philippines and MSD for Mothers, under their Global Grant Program.