Our Areas of Work

Family Planning

Enabling women to make informed decisions about whether and when to have children reduces unintended pregnancies as well as maternal and newborn deaths.

Family planning services avert unintended pregnancies, benefit maternal and infant survival, and reduce maternal mortality. They also allow women to plan their pregnancies and space their children, and therefore increase educational and economic opportunities for women and lead to healthier families and communities.

However, 164 million women of reproductive age still lack access to family planning services. Since 2010 the DAK Foundation, now DAK International Network (DIN) have provided access to free contraceptives, focusing on LARCs (Long-Acting Reversible Contraceptive Implants). We have mainly worked in Papua New Guinea (PNG), Myanmar, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda and DRC.

Post Partum Family Planning

Papua New Guinea

In 2010, we joined a team visiting Kiriwina in the Trobriand Islands of Papua New Guinea, where family planning needs were significant, and health centres lacked essential services and supplies. The team offered Tubal Ligations (TLs), IUDs, Long-Acting Reversible Implants (LARCs), pills, and condoms. Demand for contraceptive implants was overwhelming—95% of the women preferred Implants. Within a year, over 2,000 women, or 20% of women of reproductive age, received implants. Partnering with the “Spacim Pikinini” initiative, we provided 40,000 implants to the region.

In 2015, Professor Glen Mola from the University of Papua New Guinea invited us to support a project offering implants to post-natal women within 48 hours of giving birth at Port Moresby General Hospital. The uptake was extraordinary, with 40% choosing to have the implant before discharge after birth. Since then, with Prof. Mola as our Special Advisor, we have collaborated with Marie Stopes PNG to train and manage nurses, expanding this initiative to other provincial hospitals.

Together with Marie Stopes PNG, we have continued supporting the rollout, impacting four major hospitals: Port Moresby, Lae (up to 2023), Mt. Hagen, and Goroka. Our work has strengthened access to family planning, benefiting thousands of women across the country.

Uganda

Following on from the success in PNG, DIN has recently partnered with Marie Stopes Uganda to offer post-partum family planning services at the busiest public maternity hospital in the country, Kawempe National Referral Hospital. Kawempe Hospital accounts for over 20,000 births annually.

We would welcome any opportunity to replicate this simple intervention in other LMICs.

Family Planning Services for Displaced Communities

Women in conflict areas have a high demand for family planning services, but services are often unavailable or unsafe to get to.

The impact of unintended pregnancy and unsafe abortions (as well as maternal or infant deaths) can be devastating to families who are already suffering displacement.

Since 2018 we have been working with the Burmese Children Medical Fund (BCMF) to provide Implants to volunteer groups servicing displaced communities in ethnic states of Myanmar.

Skilled practitioners provide training in family planning services and train sexual health providers on insertion/removal techniques working in NGOs (non-government organisations), CBOs (community-based organisations) and ethnic groups along the border.

Family Planning Services in Primary Health Clinics

We have supported several primary health care clinics with ensuring access to a supply of implants.

We have worked with several partners in Myanmar, Kenya, DRC and Uganda. For example, we support Medical Action Myanmar with access to implants.

Through their clinics and CHW (Community Health Worker) networks they are able to offer free contraception to women who cannot access affordable family planning.

CYP (Couple Years Protection) Historical Data

* CYP is the estimated amount of protection a couple receives from FP methods over the course of a year. It’s calculated by multiplying the number of contraceptives distributed by a conversion factor that represents the length of protection each contraceptive provides.

Our
Areas of Work

Our primary purpose is to pursue health interventions at scale in disadvantaged communities in lower income countries.

We optimise resources and leverage existing capacity to maximise the number of people we can assist.

Restorative Eye Surgery

To date 555,000 cataract surgeries funded.

There are several hundred million avoidably blind persons around the world.

Essential Medical Equipment

Range donated to over 40 countries.

Providing health networks with essential equipment that can increase efficiency and enable health care workers to deliver better care.

Women's Health

20,000 prolapse and fistula surgeries funded.

Focusing on Birth Injury Repair and Family Planning, we provide training to doctors in both surgical and conservative prolapse management.