Summary

Key program components

Réseau Confiance has 123 health centers, 329 pharmacies, in 9 out of the 11 provinces of Democratic Republic of Congo, and directs its efforts in providing low-income women with oral contraceptives, injectables, Copper T and natural Family Planning. Each health center has 1 doctor, 4-6 nurses and 1 lab technician, whom are accredited by the government.

Community Health Workers (CHW) carry out interpersonal and mass media communications, as well as referrals to network clinics and pharmacies. The network currently has 102 CHWs. The CHWs do not receive any fee for referrals but are paid monthly stipends.

Reseau Confiance has been facing problems due to insufficient product quantities, which continues to increase with the increase of demand, low retention rates of clinicians and pharmacists, and with the lack of cooperation provided by local governments in ensuring supervision of clinics and pharmacies. Despite these difficulties, however, Reseau Confiance has succeeded in acquiring collaboration agreements by the partners in the network, holding meetings with all network members at the provincial level to share information, and diffusing teams of mobile educators to spread information on Family Planning (FP) and to refer potential clients to Reseau Confiance network clinics and pharmacies.

Reseau Confiance is focusing its efforts in expanding the network, within the current sites and into more cities in the DRC, and will be introducing the implant Jadelle into the network.

Quality assurance and performance monitoring methods include:

• All franchisees and Population Services International staff have completed a USAID training for FP legislative and policy requirements

• Site inspections (12/year)

• Internal clinic audits (1/year)

• Client satisfaction surveys (1/year)

• Franchise performance benchmarking (4/year)

• Provider self-assessments (4/year)

The supervision strategy has shifted from internal monthly supervision visits done by Population Services International teams to joint quarterly supervision visits done with the Family Planning National Program. Data from quality assurance (QA) audits conducted in two provinces are being used to update communications strategies, improve quality of service-delivery, and update the network QA plan. The program’s national supervision checklist for QA was recently updated with the Reproductive Health National Program. In 2012, an SMS-based referral system was established to report adverse events.

Additionally, 32,445 new clients were served and 192,643 total visits were made in 2012.