Enhancing Nutrition Services to Improve Maternal and Child Health - Response to COVID-19

This project works to safeguard the provision of critical reproductive maternal newborn and child health services for women and girls. This project supports national health system efforts in the communities where they are working to help prevent and mitigate the negative consequences of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in Bangladesh Kenya Myanmar and Tanzania. Project activities include: (1) promoting preventive measures to slow and stop the spread of COVID-19 in target communities; (2) procuring and distributing hygiene materials to vulnerable households and key services providers/institutions for prevention of COVID-19; (3) providing training and equipping public health systems and service providers to deliver gender-responsive COVID-19 prevention detection treatment and surveillance services; and (4) facilitating the protection of essential health nutrition and sexual reproductive health and rights services including sexual gender-based violence and micronutrient powder supplementation. This project expects to provide support to 6 312 851 people of which 1 946 048 are women and adolescent girls in Bangladesh Kenya Myanmar and Tanzania.

The expected outcomes for this project include: (1) strengthened community health promotion with a focus on gender-responsive prevention; (2) improved health systems and health workforce capacity for the provision of optimized treatment and care services for all COVID-19 patients; and (3) strengthened community-based social services to minimize the gendered impact of the pandemic on health systems social services and economic activity particularly for women and girls.