Getting Down to Business

Karibu! (Welcome)

Now that the jet lag has worn off and I’ve settled into my housing, it’s time to get serious about reproductive health!

The work I’ll been doing is interesting, if not exactly what I thought it would be. To explain it, I’ll give a little background on the development scene in Tanzania. 

Tanzania is a bit of a “donor darling,” I’ve been told. Dar itself is a beautiful, coastal city that is safe and  fairly well-developed, where English is spoken and the government is very organized and committed.  This has meant that international governments and NGOs have poured countless money into the country, all with good intentions, but often duplicating or even hindering the efforts of others. 

One part of the solution is that the UN is piloting a program here and in seven other countries called UN Delivering as One, in which all of the UN agencies work together and assemble one programmatic agenda and one business plan to guide the actions by all the agencies. It’s a very ambitious undertaking and one that has required a lot of reorganization. 

Meanwhile in 1998, the government switched its structure so that it is organized by Sector Wide Approaches. Rather than development organizations leading specific programs and projects and giving money to the government for those limited endeavors, they are encouraging greater coordination among, for example, all health partners.  The health sector is then funded, partly by traditional donor grants, partly by government funds, and partly by a "health basket." The basket is a joint account where donors put money that is earmarked for health, but otherwise entirely at the discretion of the government to spend. The idea is that it will give greater ownership to developing countries’ government, build its capacity, and allow for input from the local and regional levels, thereby encouraging decentralization. 

It all sounds great in theory, but there are some caveats. Not all donors are as willing to put hundreds of thousands of dollars into a pool of money and watch it disappear with little say on how it’s being spent. The way the money here is distributed also means that it’s difficult to track where the basket funds go specifically, as compared to other funds from the government. Therefore it’s difficult to justify and prove that funds coming from our organization actually do support reproductive health. So that’s what I’m working on. Trying to better understand how by donating to the basket fund UNFPA is furthering its mission and supporting reproductive health. This type analysis seems very similar to our Spring Exercise this year at Harvard and I’m grateful for that preparation. 

While I was reading through reports this week, I found these statistics in favor of supporting reproductive health as part of a development agenda. I thought they were startling and decided I’d share them:

• 1/3 of 536,000 maternal deaths each year could be averted if women had access to reliable family planning methods,
• At least 1/3 of the 190 million unintentional pregnancies could be avoided with availability of family planning methods
•  Nearly 50 million women who resort to abortion, of which 19 million are performed under unsafe conditions, could be prevented had the women had access to reliable reproductive health services.   (citation for facts below)

While these statistics are global, Tanzania has unique challenges that it’s facing due to a very young and growing population. I’ll try to go more into details on that in my next post. But for now I think I’ve rambled on enough. Thanks to all for reading and supporting. And thanks again to WAPP for making this opportunity possible!

A COMPREHENSIVE REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH COMMODITY SECURITY (RHCS) ASSESSMENT IN TANZANIA MAINLAND
Directorate of External Linkage and Community Engagement
Mzumbe University
P.O. Box 105, MZUMBE
Tel: +255(0)23 2604380/1/3/4 Ext.1038
Fax: +255 23 2604382; E-mail: ice@mzumbe.ac.tz
NOVEMBER, 2011