In 2017, the Ministry of Health and Public Hygiene (MSHP) of Côte d’Ivoire initiated the institutionalization of immediate postpartum family planning (IPPFP) following promising results of a first ever IPPFP intervention implemented at the Treichville University Hospital.
MSHP took steps to operationalize IPPFP by launching an appeal to international donors and technical partners to support Côte d’Ivoire’s scale-up of IPPFP to all public facilities that provide childbirth services. In response to this request, Pathfinder International initiated the “Immediate Postpartum Family Planning (IPPFP)” intervention in the Agneby-Tiassa-Mé (ATM) Health Region in 2017.
In a country with low contraceptive prevalence and strong political will to increase contraception services in the immediate postpartum period, project staff, in collaboration with MSHP, decided to focus on Côte d’Ivoire’s health districts of Agboville, Adzopé, and Akoupé. These health districts, which were not traditionally preferred for donor-funded family planning (FP) activities, were selected for their weak FP indicators and lack of specific interventions to strengthen them.
