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The United Nations Population Fund - UNFPA
in Nicaragua
Reproductive
Health
including Family Planning and Sexual Health
UNFPA’s
efforts in the area of reproductive health for adults
are designed to improve the quality and coverage of
reproductive health services as well as to strengthen
the demand for those services. The aim is to ensure that
people are aware of their reproductive health needs and
rights and then have access to the services that can
meet those needs. In the supply of services, UNFPA
concentrates on primary health care and in helping to
increase access in the rural and marginalized urban
areas where poverty is concentrated.
The
Fund has helped the Ministry of Health in supplying 239
health units located in seven priority departments with
basic equipment and medical inputs to improve the
availability of reproductive health services. In
addition, a total of 494 health professionals (doctors,
nurses and auxiliary nurses) have been trained in
subjects related to reproductive health. The 19 clinics
and hospitals of the Nicaraguan Army and the National
Police have been equipped to offer basic reproductive
health information, education and services. To help
monitor the management, availability and quality of
reproductive health services, UNFPA has helped the
Ministry of Health set up a statistical information
system on the services offered in various locations.
One of
the prerequisites of reproductive health is access to a
wide range of modern contraceptives that meet the needs
of different couples. Therefore, the Fund has helped to
put in place a national logistics system to balance the
supply of available contraceptives with the evolution of
consumption and with the projection of future needs. The
system helps to guarantee that health units are suitably
supplied with needed contraceptives: 77 per cent of the
239 health units in the municipalities covered by UNFPA’s
programme now have adequate levels of contraceptives and
are able to offer more than three modern methods of
contraception.
Population
and Development
The
Government of Nicaragua has explicitly recognized the
importance of the population dynamic in the fight
against poverty. UNFPA's actions in the area of
population and development are therefore designed to
help the Government incorporate population dynamics into
public sector decisions. To accomplish this, UNFPA
provided support for the design of the National
Population Policy (NPP) Action Plan and for actions to
follow up on the implementation of the Programme of
Action of the International Conference on Population and
Development (ICPD).
UNFPA
has elaborated and disseminated informational materials
and conceptual position papers to promote policy and
technical dialogue with the Government, civil society
and the donor community on population and poverty
reduction issues. UNFPA has proposed that the NPP Action
Plan be inserted into the country’s poverty reduction
strategy framework to give the plan greater weight and
to speed up its implementation. The Fund is also helping
the Government develop a set of indicators so that it
can gauge the achievements being made in implementing
the ICPD Programme of Action.
UNFPA
has devoted special efforts to supplying
socio-demographic information and to strengthening data
collection at the local level to help local authorities
improve their decision-making processes. Eight
statistical reports and two municipal socio-demographic
diagnostic studies were carried out and disseminated.
Updated socio-demographic information on local
conditions has been disseminated in 20 municipalities.
In five of them, the Fund has help to install a
geographically-referenced socio-demographic information
system. UNFPA also supported a programme to help
authorities and technicians in 20 municipalities
increase their knowledge of the ICPD Programme of Action
and of the National Population Policy so that they could
play their full role in implementing these two crucial
components of national development efforts.
Advocacy
In
order to mobilize support for the ICPD Programme of
Action and the work of UNFPA, the Fund carries out
advocacy activities at the highest political and
technical levels of the Government – the Presidency,
the Office of the First Lady, and the Presidency’s
Technical Secretariat. This approach is complemented by
specific actions designed to reach selected audiences
from the Government, non-governmental organizations
(NGOs), private companies and other donors. In
Nicaraguan society as a whole, promotion of political
and social support for sexual and reproductive health
and rights has been encouraged through public debate and
by taking advantage of various national initiatives. The
result has been increasing recognition of the roles that
balanced population growth and better reproductive
health play in national development.
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