Emergency Health & Nutrition Programs’

Family Planning and Post-abortion Care (PAC) 2021 Global Award

Save the Children aspires to ensure that all women and girls in crises are respected and supported in their reproductive health choices, and have access to the Minimum Initial Service Package (MISP) for reproductive health through our humanitarian health programming, with an emphasis on family planning (FP), post-abortion care (PAC) and comprehensive abortion care (CAC). Over more than eight years, support from a large anonymous donor for the Family Planning and Post-abortion Care Global Award (2014-2021) helped us strengthen our capacity and cement our commitment to reach more women and girls with MISP services in acute and protracted emergencies.

During the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, we will continue to drive progress institutionalizing the MISP in our humanitarian and emergency operations in Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. This will include increased attention to strengthening adolescent sexual and reproductive health and management of sexually transmitted illness elements of the MISP in each country. Drawing on our global institutional experience, we will also support subnational Ministries of Health to strengthen CAC services in compliance with national and U.S. government policy. Save the Children will utilize the MISP platform to discuss CAC with the national partner and the sub-national Ministries of Health in the three countries. We will build on the work that has been done for institutionalization of CAC and will focus on working with the local sub-national Ministries of Health in advocating for inclusion of MISP in their protocols and strategies.

Adolescent sexual reproductive health will be particularly addressed as an important part in advocating for MISP. During 2021, we will support national non-governmental organizations (NGOs), community-based organizations (CBOs) and/or subnational Ministry of Health counterparts to increasingly assume Save the Children’s current functions. We are confident our 2021 efforts will meaningfully contribute to strengthening national partner technical and operational expertise needed to secure sustained sources of funding and independently support delivery of the MISP in each country, and hope that this critically important localization work can continue in 2022-2023.

Global OFDA Infant and Young Child Feeding (IYCF) Nutrition Award

During emergencies, through our Global OFDA IYCF Nutrition Award (2019-2022) we provide early actions to protect and promote recommended IYCF behaviors and support mothers/caregivers to meet their own basic needs and the needs of children in their care (e.g., see IYCF Tools in the Context of COVID-19). This includes providing skilled counseling and psychosocial support, setting up safe spaces such as mother-baby areas or IYCF corners, and establishing IYCF support groups. We also focus on protecting mothers and children from inappropriate distribution of breastmilk substitute, while ensuring that the needs of the non-breastfed infant are met through an appropriate program.

USAID Ready Initiative

Save the Children leads the USAID-funded READY initiative (2018-2022), a consortium of operational and academic partners strengthening and augmenting the capacity of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) worldwide to respond to large-scale infectious outbreaks of epidemic or pandemic potential, including COVID-19. READY conducts focused activities to support and strengthen outbreak coordination, build NGO operational capacity to respond to major outbreaks, and develop technical readiness across humanitarian sectors using an integrated and community-centered approach. Register for READY’s email list for more information.