During the past 2 months, UMATI, the International Planned Parenthood Federation’s Member Association in Tanzania, focused on influencing decision makers at a national level to increase budget for family planning supplies for financial year 2009/10.
The primary targets of these advocacy efforts were the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Finance in Tanzania, while secondary targets included parliamentarians and the press (media).
The purpose of advocacy to secondary targets was to get their support so they focus their influence on persuading the government and Ministries to increase funding for family planning supplies from the current budget of Tanzania Shillings 3.5 billion to 9.6 billion (from approx US$2.65m to from $7.26m).
This figure of 9.6bn Tanzanian Shillings is important as it was the request proposed by the Contraceptive Security Committee in Tanzania as the minimum amount needed for procurement of contraceptives for 2009/10 fiscal year.
We have now secured this commitment from the government of Tanzania for 9.6bn Tanzania shillings.
This is potentially a huge breakthrough for reproductive health supply funding and reproductive health security in Tanzania.
Many steps were taken and many partners involved in reaching this milestone.
What happened?
Advocacy to secondary targets: a series of advocacy meetings were held between April and July 2009 ahead of the crucial tabling of the Ministry of Health budget on July 29, 2009.
The UMATI ‘Project RMA’ secretariat (UMATI staff and other partners including MEWATA, MST and an individual journalist) met with two parliamentary committees; the community development committee and the social services committee and also with a parliamentary association for Population and Development.
Prior to meeting the parliamentarians ahead of the budget process, the project secretariat also organized a training workshop for journalists on the importance of family planning to the nation’s socio-economic development.
We hoped to generate some noise on the issue that would persuade parliamentarians this issue was topical.
The meetings with journalists and parliamentarians showed how little importance was being attached to family planning by the government, despite the importance of this issue to family well being, individual progress and national economic development.
Collecting evidence: to convince the secondary targets the issue we are addressing is critical, UMATI staff had to undertake research to find out the government expenditure on family planning supplies.
With help from numerous sources, notably JSI/Deliver in Tanzania, the trend for the past five years was established, showing the declining importance given to family planning as reflected by the budget allocated for it.
Also, data were sourced from other organizations on the importance of family planning to achieving the nation’s development goals.
The research of Futures Group/HPI was especially useful in this regard, giving us a clear and ready packaged message.
This information assisted us to convince our targets to support our efforts to convince the government to allocate more funds for contraceptives for financial year 2009/10.
Partners support: the Contraceptive Security Committee is made up of 13 organizations working in reproductive health including the Reproductive and Child Health Section of the Ministry of Health (RCHS).
Others are:
- Medical Stores Department
- Pharmaceutical Services Unit of the Ministry of Health
- DELIVER project
- USAID
- UNFPA
- GTZ
- National AIDS Control Programme
- ACQUIRE
- T-MARC
- UMATI
- Marie Stopes
- PSI
This Committee backed up the project’s efforts by providing a lot of necessary information e.g. the current stock in hand of contraceptives.
In March 2009, for some supplies stocks would last less than a month (this was attributed to inadequate budget for the past three years).
The committee also provided the project with the estimated need (Tsh. 9.6billion) 2009/10 which became the “ask” in the advocacy message.
Advocacy meeting with Parliamentarians: Sectoral Parliamentary committees discuss respective Ministries’ budget proposals two months before the National Assembly sits to discuss the government budget, so the project’s secretariat organized an advocacy meeting with the committee for social development prior to their meeting.
The parliamentarians appreciated the information and said that the “ask” for increased budget for family planning was timely.
The information provided by the project was used by the MPs to advise the Minister for Health on the budget for family planning.
Advocacy to journalists: the issue of budget for family planning supplies hit the headlines from different angles between May and July 2009.
This was after the training workshop which drew the interest of a number of individual journalists who joined the Project RMA network as individuals – as well with support from US based Population Reference Bureau who have been profiling supply shortages in Tanzania by training and supporting local media to cover the issue.
The media people often approached UMATI to seek more information and clarification of family planning related issues.
The project also commissioned 2 journalists to develop human interest stories on how people were affected by the shortages of family planning supplies.
The stories featured in the Government newspaper the Daily News and the independent one, the Guardian.
For a period of 2 months before the Minister finalized the health budget in parliament the media were appealing to increase the budget for family planning.
The media (both English and Kiswahili ones) made noise about the issues and prompted the Deputy Minister for Health to summon the Head of Reproductive Health and Director of Preventive services for explanation before convening a press conference to explain the situation.
Second advocacy meeting with Parliamentarians: the UMATI meeting in Dodoma in late July was originally planned to be the launching of a campaign for increased budget for family planning supplies, but following advice by the Prime Minister, the event was changed to an advocacy meeting.
The meeting was held just two days before the Ministry of Health reading its budget in parliament.
The Parliamentarians who met were the social development committee, social services committee and the Parliamentarians Association for Population and Development.
A total of 42 MPs attended the meeting and assured the project secretariat that they had already done their job and that the government had already increased the budget to the figure we proposed to them previously.
Messaging: the message which was always carried by the project was in Kiswahili and can be translated as follows, “Increase budget for family planning supplies from the current Tsh. 3.5 billion to Tsh9.6billion for 2009/10 because it will contribute significantly to achieving the MKUKUTA’s goal and Vision 2025. For example, by investing in family planning and meeting the current unmet need we’ll be able to save Tsh. 162 trilion for education”.
Government response: following the outcry about the unavailability of contraceptives in the media and from parliamentarians, the Deputy Minister for Health held a press conference to elaborate on the situation and how the government is going to address the issue.
It was just a day before the Ministry moving its budget for 2009/10.
At the conference the Minister admitted shortages of contraceptives, though she refuted that the problem was as serious as reported.
However, the following day the Ministry made it clear in the parliament that the government has allocated Tsh. 9.6 billion for family planning supplies.
UMATI understands so far that the Government of Tanzania has allocated 2.5bn of this from its own funds and expects to find the deficit from other sources.
These details need to be ironed out and monitored in coming weeks – but the 9.6bn Tanzania shilling allocation remains a milestone because the 3.5bn allocated the previous included donor contributions.
Conclusion: following the government’s positive response, UMATI and Project RMA partners efforts will be directed towards monitoring fund releases, procurement procedures and sustaining the current government’s position towards family planning in 2009/10.
Such monitoring is in theory done by the national contraceptive security committee, however as well as UMATI wanting to support the Committees goals, the committee lacks the legal authority to pressure the government to act on the committee’s recommendations.
Therefore, one of the project’s activities during its second year will also be to strengthen this committee’s position so it has a more authoritative voice to the government.
We will also still need to advocate and monitor progress at district level, to ensure national and district promises and practices are synchronized.
Arthur Jason – UMATI Project RMA Advocacy Officer - Tanzania
August 2009