Policy Development
Advancing women’s health must involve the top: ensuring government policies are in effect that benefit women’s health and increase their access to vital health services and products.
To this end VSI works closely with ministries of health to:
- share the results of our research,
- build coalitions and
- support safe motherhood strategies.
Our goal is to reach poor, rural and underserved women outside of a hospital setting. Our primary policy objectives include ensuring that national guidelines include misoprostol for women’s health indications so providers are educated on how to provide misoprostol to women. We also work to ensure that government agencies are procuring misoprostol tablets for use in public sector hospitals and clinics. By adding misoprostol to national essential medicines lists, government health systems deem the tablets necessary to the health of a majority of the population and thereby prioritize procurement.
To date VSI has successfully facilitated the inclusion of misoprostol in national guidelines or essential medicines lists in Ghana, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Zanzibar, Nigeria, Uganda, Zambia and Kenya.
