She says Carbohydrate metabolism program Menstrual health and sexual health wexual to Menxtrual attitudes at the Menstrual health and sexual health level yealth that the importance of menstrual health is explicitly stated in policy guidelines. Table 2 FGD Participant Demographics female CHIEDZA clients Full size table. It also uses a life cycle approach to consider the MH and SRHR needs of girls, women and all people who menstruate, from pre-menarche to post menopause. These challenges are particularly acute in humanitarian crises.

Menstrual health and sexual health -

Consumer insights drive our work from start to finish. The consumer is our CEO. In , our human-centered design work in East Africa explored ways that our work could support and accompany young women as they navigate the various choices required for a healthy, enjoyable sexual and reproductive life.

Across five markets — Guatemala, Kenya, South Africa, Uganda and Pakistan — VIYA utilizes technology to provide women with convenient, discreet, and enjoyable tools for making informed choices about their bodies.

The platform offers a wealth of high-quality sexual wellness information, covering topics from periods to pleasure in an accessible and relatable manner. Additionally, VIYA fosters a supportive community where users can share experiences and receive guidance from counselors.

In , VIYA will begin offering a diverse range of sexual wellness products and connect users with trusted healthcare providers, ensuring comprehensive care tailored to individual needs. By: Fana Abay , Marketing and Communication s Directo r, PSI Ethiopia.

In rural Ethiopia, women and girls often face significant barriers in accessing healthcare facilities, which can be located hours away. Moreover, there is a prevailing stigma surrounding the use of contraception, with concerns about potential infertility or the perception of promiscuity. To address these challenges, the Smart Start initiative has emerged, linking financial well-being with family planning through clear and relatable messaging that addresses the immediate needs of young couples—planning for the lives and families they envision.

Smart Start takes a community-based approach, utilizing a network of dedicated Navigators who engage with women in their localities. These Navigators provide counseling and refer interested clients to Health Extension Workers or healthcare providers within Marie Stopes International-operated clinics for comprehensive contraceptive counseling and services.

In a significant development, PSI Ethiopia has digitized the proven counseling messaging of Smart Start, expanding its reach to more adolescent girls, young women, and couples. This approach aligns with the priorities set by the Ethiopian Ministry of Health MOH and is made possible through funding from Global Affairs Canada.

The interactive and engaging digital messaging has revolutionized counseling services, enabling clients to make informed and confident decisions regarding both their finances and contraceptive choices. Clients who received counseling with the digital Smart Start tool reported a higher understanding of their options and were more likely to choose contraception 74 percent compared to those counseled with the manual version of Smart Start 64 percent.

Navigators also found the digital tool more effective in connecting with clients, leading to higher ratings for the quality of their counseling. By December , PSI Ethiopia, working in close collaboration with the MOH, aims to reach over 50 thousand new clients by leveraging the digital counseling tool offered by Smart Start.

This innovative approach allows for greater accessibility and effectiveness in providing sexual and reproductive health services, contributing to improved reproductive health outcomes for women and couples across the country.

By: Christopher Lourenço, Deputy Director, Malaria, PSI Global. Community health workers CHWs are critical lifelines in their communities. Ensuring they have the training, support, and equipment they need is essential to keep their communities safe from malaria, especially in the hardest to reach contexts.

For example, in Mali, access to formal health services remains challenging, with four in ten people living several miles from the nearest health center, all without reliable transportation or access.

In , the Ministry of Health adopted a community health strategy to reach this population. The U. In , thousand malaria cases were recorded by CHWs ; 6.

During that time, the PMI Impact Malaria project IM designed and supported two rounds of supportive supervision of CHWs in their workplaces in the IM-supported regions of Kayes and Koulikoro.

This included developing and digitizing a standardized supervision checklist; and developing a methodology for selecting which CHWs to visit. Once a long list of CHW sites had been determined as accessible to supervisors for a day trip including security reasons , the supervisors telephoned the CHWs to check when they would be available to receive a visit [as being a CHW is not a full-time job, and certain times of the year they are busy with agricultural work planting, harvesting or supporting health campaigns like mosquito net distribution].

Supervisors directly observed how CHWs performed malaria rapid diagnostic tests RDTs and administered artemisinin-based combination therapy ACT. They recorded CHW performance using the digitized checklist, interviewed community members, reviewed records, and provided on-the-spot coaching.

They also interviewed the CHWs and tried to resolve challenges they expressed, including with resupply of commodities or equipment immediately or soon afterwards.

Beyond the observed interactions with patients, supervisors heard from community members that they were pleased that CHWs were able to provide essential malaria services in the community.

And the data shows the impact. Between both rounds, availability of ACT increased from 80 percent to 90 percent. Supportive supervision with interviews and observations at sites improved the basic competencies of CHWs between the first and second rounds, and additional rounds will help to understand the longer-term programmatic benefits.

By: Dr. Dorothy Balaba, Country Representative, PSI Ethiopia. This approach creates sustainable and affordable solutions, by integrating market forces and supporting businesses to grow, while creating demand at the household level.

For example, more than thousand households have invested in upgraded sanitation solutions with rapid expansion to come as the initiative scales and market growth accelerates. The Ethiopian government is now scaling the approach to all districts through various national, regional, and local institutions with requisite expertise.

To share the journey to market-based sanitation, representatives of the Ethiopian Ministry of Health and the USAID Transform WASH team took to the stage at the UN Water Conference in Building upon the success and insights gained from our work with HIV self-testing HIVST , PSI is actively applying this approach to better integrate self-care, more broadly, in the health system beginning with Hepatitis C and COVID Self-testing has emerged as a powerful tool to increase access to integrated, differentiated, and decentralized health services, accelerating prevention, care, and treatment for various diseases, while also increasing health system resilience against COVID Seven years ago, the landscape of HIV self-testing lacked global guidelines, and only the U.

High disease burdened countries in low-and-middle-income-countries LMICs lacked evidence and guidance for HIVST despite major gaps in HIV diagnosis. However, through the groundbreaking research from the Unitaid-funded HIV Self-Testing Africa STAR initiative led by PSI, we demonstrated that HIVST is not only safe and acceptable but also cost-effective for reaching populations at high risk with limited access to conventional HIV testing.

This research played a pivotal role in informing the normative guidelines of the World Health Organization WHO and shaping policies at the country level. As a result, more than countries globally now have reported HIVST policies, with an increasing number of countries implementing and scaling up HIVST to complement and partially replace conventional testing services.

This became especially significant as nations tried to sustain HIV services amidst the disruptions caused by the COVID pandemic. By leveraging our expertise, PSI is conducting research to identify specific areas and populations where the adoption of Hepatitis C and COVID self-testing could significantly enhance testing uptake and coverage.

This research serves as the foundation for developing targeted strategies and interventions to expand access to self-testing, ensure that individuals have convenient and timely options for testing for these diseases, and are linked to care, treatment and prevention services through differentiated test and treat approaches.

Coaches are men who are not just stable on treatment but also living proudly and openly with HIV. Situated within the community and collaborating closely with clinic staff, they identify and connect with men struggling with barriers to treatment and support them in overcoming those barriers, whether that means navigating the clinic or disclosing their HIV status to their loved ones.

PSI and Matchboxology first piloted the model in with implementing partners BroadReach Healthcare and Right to Care as well as the Department of Health in three districts of South Africa. Since then, the model has been rolled out by eight implementing partners in South Africa, employing more than coaches and reaching tens of thousands of men living with HIV.

To date, the model has linked 98 percent of clients to care and retained 94 percent of them, in sharp contrast to the estimated 70 percent of men with HIV in South Africa who are currently on treatment.

We were able to uncover and support this new way forward because we had flexible funding to focus on truly understanding the community and the root barriers to PrEP adoption. By: Hoa Nguyen, Country Director, PSI Vietnam.

In late , with funding from the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, PSI and Babylon partnered to pilot AIOI in Vietnam. The main goal is to support people in low-income communities to make informed decisions about their health and efficiently navigate the healthcare system, while reducing the burden on the healthcare workforce.

Under our global partnership with Meta, PSI launched a digital campaign to put this innovative product in the hands of people in Vietnam. By the end of June in the nine months since product launch , thousand people accessed the AIOI platform; 2.

But for this data to be effective and useable, it needs to be available across the health system. Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources FHIR standard provides a common, open standard that enables this data exchange.

PSI will also look to adopt and scale health workforce-facing FHIR-enabled tools, such as OpenSRP2, which will be piloted in an SRH-HIV prevention project in eSwatini in partnership with Ona by the end of When PSI conducted a review of existing disease surveillance systems in Myanmar, it identified several gaps: although the Ministry of Health had systems in place for HIV, tuberculosis, malaria and other communicable diseases, they were fragmented, with different reporting formats and reliance on paper-based reporting.

In addition, private sector case surveillance data were not routinely captured, yet private clinics and pharmacies are the dominant health service delivery channel in the country. It also uses a life cycle approach to consider the MH and SRHR needs of girls, women and all people who menstruate, from pre-menarche to post menopause.

Home library documents Technical brief on the integration of menstrual health into sexual and reproductive health and rights policies and programmes. Technical brief on the integration of menstrual health into sexual and reproductive health and rights policies and programmes.

UNFPA ESARO. To effectively manage their menstruation, girls and women require access to water, sanitation and hygiene WASH facilities, affordable and appropriate menstrual hygiene materials, information on good practices, and a supportive environment where they can manage menstruation without embarrassment or stigma.

They understand the basic facts linked to the menstrual cycle and how to manage it with dignity and without discomfort or fear. The challenges that menstruating girls, women, and other menstruators face encompass more than a basic lack of supplies or infrastructure.

While menstruation is a normal and healthy part of life for most women and girls, in many societies, the experience of menstruators continues to be constrained by cultural taboos and discriminatory social norms.

The resulting lack of information about menstruation leads to unhygienic and unhealthy menstrual practices and creates misconceptions and negative attitudes, which motivate, among others, shaming, bullying, and even gender-based violence.

For generations of girls and women, poor menstrual health and hygiene is exacerbating social and economic inequalities, negatively impacting their education, health, safety, and human development. The multi-dimensional issues that menstruators face require multi-sectoral interventions.

WASH professionals alone cannot come up with all of the solutions to tackle the intersecting issues of inadequate sanitary facilities, lack of information and knowledge, lack of access to affordable and quality menstrual hygiene products, and the stigma and social norms associated with menstruation.

Research has shown that approaches that can effectively combine information and education with appropriate infrastructure and menstrual products, in a conducive policy environment, are more successful in avoiding the negative effects of poor MHH — in short, a holistic approach requiring collaborative and multi-dimensional responses.

Priority Areas. In low-income countries, half of the schools lack adequate water, sanitation, and hygiene services crucial to enable girls and female teachers to manage menstruation UNICEF Schools that have female-friendly facilities and incorporate information on menstruation into the curriculum for both girls and boys can reduce stigma and contribute to better education and health outcomes.

When girls and women have access to safe and affordable sanitary materials to manage their menstruation, they decrease their risk of infections. This can have cascading effects on overall sexual and reproductive health, including reducing teen pregnancy, maternal outcomes, and fertility.

Poor menstrual hygiene, however, can pose serious health risks, like reproductive and urinary tract infections which can result in future infertility and birth complications.

Neglecting to wash hands after changing menstrual products can spread infections, such as hepatitis B and thrush. Awareness of MHH contributes to building an enabling environment of nondiscrimination and gender equality in which female voices are heard, girls have choices about their future, and women have options to become leaders and managers.

In addition, feminine hygiene products are a multibillion-dollar industry, which, if properly tapped into, can generate income for many and significantly boost economic growth. Disposable sanitary products contribute to large amounts of global waste. Ensuring women and girls have access to sustainable and quality products, and improving the management of the disposal of menstrual products, can make a big difference to the environment.

In India alone, roughly million women and girls use an average of eight disposable and non-compostable pads per month, generating 1.

Indeed, on any given day some million women and Menstrual health and sexual health are menstruating. But they often Menstural it in shame and secrecy, while many Mnstrual access to water, Betta Fish Care Guide, Menstryal facilities hralth products so they can manage their menstruation with dignity. And a recent documentary film as well as new podcasts are shining a light on the taboos, stigmas and costs of menstruation. These social and financial constraints remain particularly stark in low-income countries, forcing girls to miss school and marginalizing women in their own families and communities. Canada supports global programs focused on maternal and child health that address cultural norms and practices surrounding menstruation and their impact on individuals and societies. Every month, Menstrial. Millions of these girls, Daily anxiety coping strategies, Herbal medicine for wellness men and non-binary healht are unable to manage heqlth menstrual cycle an a dignified, healthy way. The onset Haelth menstruation means a new phase — and new vulnerabilities — in the lives of adolescents. Yet, many adolescent girls face stigma, harassment and social exclusion during menstruation. Transgender men and non-binary persons also face discrimination due to their gender identity, depriving them of access to the materials and facilities they need. Gender inequality, discriminatory social norms, cultural taboos, poverty and lack of basic services like toilets and sanitary products can all cause menstrual health and hygiene needs to go unmet.