Ipas Mozambique has a multifaceted approach to ensuring women and girls can still access needed reproductive health care—with minimal risk of COVID-19 infection—during the pandemic.
In Zambezia Province, Ipas staff are visiting health centers that offer comprehensive abortion care to ensure use of best practices for limiting the spread of COVID-19. And in Nampula Province, which currently has the highest number of COVID-19 infections in the country, Ipas conducted an online training for almost 350 health providers and more than 70 district and health facility managers on how to reduce the risk of infection for both providers and patients within maternal and child health-care services.
In Zambézia Province, Ipas visited health facilities to assess the readiness of the comprehensive abortion care services during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In Nampula province, Ipas worked with the Provincial Directorate of Health to train almost 1,000 community leaders and key professionals on how to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
In addition to topics like how social isolation prevents COVID-19, how to safely visit family during the pandemic and how to prevent stigma and discrimination toward people who contract COVID-19, trainers also covered the availability of maternal health services like abortion and contraceptive care and the infection prevention measures in place to ensure such services are safe.
Training participants included traditional medicine practitioners and birth attendants, health committee representatives, religious leaders, community health workers, and representatives of community-based organizations.
