Quality of Family Planning Services Situational Analysis

Ensuring access to quality, comprehensive family planning (FP) services is an effective and cost-effective approach to achieve this goal. Quality FP services provide clients with easy access to a wide method mix of methods appropriate to their needs at different stages in their lifecycle, including comprehensive, correct, and easy-to-understand information on how to use these methods. The 2008 National Sexual and Reproductive Health Strategy (ENSSR) recognizes the Healthy Timing and Spacing of Pregnancies (HTSP) approach as an effective strategy to reducing maternal morbidity and mortality by providing couples and individuals with access to quality FP services to delay and space pregnancies. The ENSSR includes specific objectives and areas of intervention, such as integrating SRH services within primary health care services, increasing access to these integrated SRH services, and increasing the availability, access, and utilization of SRH services by adolescents and youth. Angola has made impressive improvements in the access to FP services, with the number of service delivery points (SDPs) where FP services are available increasing by almost 50% from 2012 to 2014. However, this must be complemented by improvements in the quality of the FP services offered, consistent with the 2014 draft National Family Planning Strategy, which includes actions to improve the quality of FP services in the country. The Bruce framework, a common standard FP quality framework, has six elements that are considered the basic characteristics of quality FP services. These elements are: choice of FP methods, technical competence of providers, information and individual counseling for clients, interpersonal relations, mechanisms to ensure continued use, and appropriateness and acceptability of services. These elements are interrelated and necessary for the total quality of an FP program. Clients have different FP needs, depending on their personal characteristics, lifestyle, and where they are in their lifecycle. No single method can meet the needs of the majority of the population, and all people have the right to choose their FP method. Services should offer the widest possible diversity of methods to meet the needs and personal preferences of as many clients as possible, including short- and long-acting methods and permanent methods. Adolescents and youth have the right to receive modern contraceptives as well as the information they need and desire to make healthy, informed decisions regarding contraception. According to the WHO Medical Eligibility Criteria, all reversible methods are appropriate for use by adolescents as young as 15.