Reproductive
Health Access
OASIS aims to improve availability of essential medicines for reproductive health, including family planning methods, especially among underserved populations.
Saving Women’s Lives
Despite improvements, maternal mortality remains very high throughout sub-Saharan Africa. In Chad, a Sahelian country which has a maternal morality ratio (MMR) of 860 maternal deaths
per 100,000 live births, the majority of which are attributed to postpartum hemorrhage (PPH) (footnote). Skilled attendance at delivery remains low in Chad, with only about a quarter of women receiving assistance from a skilled birth attendant at delivery (footnote). The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends the use of misoprostol for the prevention of PPH in-home deliveries without a skilled attendant, and encourages preventive distribution for maternal self-administration.
OASIS has received verbal approval from the Ministry of Health to implement a project that would improve access to misoprostol for the prevention of PPH, including community-level distribution.
Reproductive Health Medicines Availability
Since 2019, OASIS, in partnership with the UNDP/UNFPA/UNICEF/WHO/World Bank Special Programme of Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction (HRP) has conducted assessments in 21 lower- and middle-income countries on the availability of medical abortion (MA) medicines, including Burkina Faso, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone in the Sahel. The assessments utilized OASIS's Availability Framework, focusing on five pillars: registration and quality assurance, policy and finance, procurement and distribution, provider knowledge and behavior, and end-user knowledge and behavior.
Group Prenatal Care
With our longtime Nigerien partner, GRADE Africa, OASIS is working to reduce maternal mortality and increase uptake of postpartum family planning across the Sahel by evaluating an innovative group pre- and post-natal care approach implemented by GRADE with the Midwives Association of Niger (Association des Sages-Femmes du Niger) in government health centers in Maradi region.
Identifying Best Bets
OASIS is working on a research initiative to assess barriers and facilitators to fertility transition, funded by the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF). The project will model fertility transition patterns in 7 Sahelian/Francophone countries of West Africa (Burkina Faso, DRC, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone), identify key drivers of change in each country, and share relevant findings to help government decision-makers identify and prioritize the most effective interventions, policies and strategies for national investment.
OTC Pill Project
The OTC pill project supports the #liberatethepill movement to remove the prescription requirement for dispensing combined hormonal birth control pills, making them more accessible to all who use them.
The availability of OTC oral contraception will give millions of women convenient access to contraception without the hassles of health insurance, prescriptions or a doctor’s visit.
In 2012 the first emergency contraceptive (EC), called Plan B, was approved for OTC sale in the USA. In a landmark 2023 decision the US-FDA approved OTC sale of a progesterone only pill (the Opill*).