Saving Mothers Giving Life Monitoring and Evaluation Plan

The country's maternal mortality ratio of 591/100,000 live births ranks among the highest in the world, with low contraceptive use, high fertility trends, and limited access to antenatal care and postpartum services contributing to this issue. The initiative aims to reduce maternal mortality by 50% in four intervention districts within one year by strengthening delivery skills of health professionals, increasing delivery in health facilities, mobilizing communities to increase birth preparedness and complication readiness, and strengthening health facilities to provide quality obstetric and newborn care. The primary target audiences for the initiative include pregnant women, their partners, traditional birth attendants/traditional healers, SMAGs, neighborhood health committees, health workers, and chiefs. Secondary beneficiaries include extended family members, women of child-bearing age who are not currently pregnant, and teenage girls. The initiative aims to address critical barriers to delivery in a facility and accessing postpartum follow-up care, including fear of the process of antenatal care and facility delivery, disbelief that facility delivery is safer, lack of social support, transportation/access issues, perception of lack of quality in clinics, attitude of health workers towards mothers/families, and lack of preparation/birth planning. To address these barriers, the Communications Support for Health (CSH) project will implement a range of activities, including developing an easy-to-use toolkit for SMAGs to support mothers and mothers-to-be on safe motherhood behaviors, developing print materials for men to help them realize their role in pregnancy and delivery, creating a Change Champions program, developing a quick-counseling checklist for health workers, creating posters and billboards to remind people of the importance of facility delivery and postpartum care, and creating a TV and radio documentary to promote safe motherhood behaviors. The monitoring and evaluation (M&E) plan for the Saving Mothers Giving Life Campaign is based on the goal and objectives of the campaign and the strategies and activities designed to achieve them. The M&E plan contains indicators at the input, process, output, and outcome levels, and specifies target performance levels. Progress against these benchmarks will be tracked on a regular basis to evaluate the efforts of the project and determine ways to continuously improve it. The M&E system is intended to provide relevant and up-to-date information to all project stakeholders, enabling them to understand how the project is performing and make informed decisions. The CSH project will work closely with the Ministry of Health and other organizations to implement the activities and monitor progress. The project will also facilitate a media tour by champion chiefs to interact with local leaders and promote safe motherhood behaviors. The initiative aims to promote a culture of safe motherhood in Zambia, where women and their families have access to quality obstetric and newborn care, and where maternal mortality is reduced significantly.