Community Based Distributors to help address FP gaps in Baringo County.
To address the unmet need for family planning in Baringo County , the Delivering Sustainable and Equitable Increases in Family Planning (DESIP) programme in partnership with the Ministry of Health and the County Government of Baringo conducted a training for Community Based Distributors (CBDs) who will facilitate short term FP access within their community.
The community-based distributor’s initiative is a high impact, low cost intervention that aims to remove barriers that impede access to FP information and services, with major restrictive barriers in the provision of family planning services in Kenya being distance, cost, religion, culture, rumors and misconception among others. Baringo County falls within the hard to reach areas , and with the existing security challenges in some parts of the County, the CBDs will play a critical role in ensuring that access to FP information and services is not hindered.
Globally, evidence on community-based distributors shows that trained Community health workers can safely, acceptably and effectively provide injectable contraceptive services within their community (new recommendations WHO for task sharing 2017). Nationally, a demonstration project to assess the effectiveness of using Community Health Workers to provide injectable contraceptives was successfully carried out in Tharaka district in the former Eastern province by the Ministry of health between August 2009– August 2010 and the same findings adopted in the National Family planning Guidelines 6th Edition .
DESIP is a UK aid funded programme focused on Delivering Sustainable and Equitable Increases in Family Planning (DESIP) in low Contraceptive Prevalence Rate (CPR) counties in line with KENYA ‘Vision 2030’.
