Mauritania
IntraHealth International, a Global Communities Partner, is working synergistically with local partners to advance uptake of maternal, newborn, and child health and family planning services in Mauritania and across Francophone West Africa.
IntraHealth International, a Global Communities Partner, is working with local stakeholders in Mauritania to implement a model for integrating essential maternal, newborn, and child health (MNCH), nutrition, and family planning services to increase their accessibility and use.
These efforts aim is to help end preventable maternal and child deaths, improve maternal nutrition and feeding practices for infants and young children, achieve national goals to increase modern contraceptive prevalence, and enhance the well-being of families and communities.
Current Programs
INSPiRE
Through this regional award from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, IntraHealth is working to accelerate family planning uptake and improve MNCH indicators in the critical pre- and post-pregnancy period through integrated client-centered postpartum family planning (PPFP), MNCH, and nutrition services delivered at scale in Francophone West Africa. INSPiRE is demonstrating that providing a comprehensive package of essential services to mother and child during the same visit—at four entry points: antenatal care, delivery, postpartum care, and essential newborn care/Immunization—improves utilization, quality, and cost-effectiveness of services.
As of June 2025, INSPiRE’s integration model is being implemented in 14,826 health facilities in Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, and Togo, through synergistic coordination with the Francophone Africa Regional Community of Practice for Integrated PPFP/MNCH-N, chaired by the West African Health Organization, which supports resource and partner mobilization for scale-up. Since 2019, demonstration sites of the project have seen a 275% increase in PPFP use in supported health facilities along with a 380% increase in well-baby visits for growth monitoring.
Previous Programs
Ouagadougou Partnership Coordination Unit (OPCU)
After the pivotal family planning conference in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, in 2011, multiple donors joined nine governments to initiate the Ouagadougou Partnership, committed to elevate family planning in West Africa. With support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, IntraHealth managed the Ouagadougou Partnership Coordination Unit (OPCU) from 2012 to 2022, which raised the partnership’s visibility and helped member countries develop and implement costed implementation plans for family planning. Between 2012 and 2015, the partnership was responsible for 1.18 million new users of modern family planning, a 40% regional increase. Building on this success, the nine governments embarked on an acceleration phase and had reached 7.1 million users by 2022. IntraHealth transferred the OPCU to Senegal-based Speak Up Africa in 2021.
Civil Society for Family Planning (CS4FP)
With funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Dutch Embassy, the IntraHealth-led CS4FP project (2011-2020) worked with adolescents and young adults to collaboratively design solutions to improve the ability of youth to make informed decisions and better access respectful, quality family planning services. CS4FP helped establish and support national civil society coalitions for family planning in nine West African countries to raise a collective voice in planning with governments to meet family planning commitments. The project partnered with 364 youth ambassadors from five countries to reach more than 100,000 adolescents through youth-led campaigns.
Impact
45%
percentage of antenatal care visits
during which family planning counseling and nutritional advice were offered
12%
percentage of women admitted to CPoN who received family planning services and EI counseling
14%
percentage of women in Postnatal Consultations who use family planning services