An assessment of the Zimbabwe National Family Planning Council's community based distribution programme

Abstract

The purpose of this assessment was to review the current functioning and performance of the Zimbabwe National Family Planning Councils (ZNFPC) Community-Based Distribution (CBD) Program with a view to providing guidance to ZNFPC senior management and the programs primary external donor USAID for its future direction. The major findings from the study were: The productivity of the CBD program in terms of family planning clients visited and CYP provided has been steadily declining over a number of years. CBDs have received some basic training in STIs and HIV/AIDS and it is known that they do carry out several non-family planning activities in response to expressed needs from their communities. The focus of the MIS is still on recording and reporting the CBDs family planning activities and service delivery only. This study indicated that the CBD program could potentially play an expanded role in the countrys fight against the AIDS epidemic beyond providing condoms to family planning clients. If the program is to redirect itself by broadening the agents role along these lines then a number of programmatic elements need to be addressed. Underlying any efforts to redirect the program must be a consideration of the program costs and their allocation between program elements. Simultaneously ZNFPC needs to look for ways to ensure a sustainable source of funding over the mid-term future.