Garin starts modern family planning services for indigents

MANILA, Philippines - Acting Health Secretary Janette Garin has started implementing the mobile outreach program to provide modern family planning services to the poor.

Last Oct. 30, the Department of Health (DOH) issued the guidelines for the program through Administrative Order No. 2014-0042.

The program is in accordance with Republic Act No. 10354, the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act of 2012.

It requires the national and local government to provide mobile health care services (MHCS) appropriate to a locality’s terrain to deliver health care goods and services, especially to the poor .

“Existing policies on the conduct of medical outreach cover only government providers, thus missing on the opportunity to scale up delivery of quality modern family planning services that can be brought about by including the private service providers,” read the administrative order.

It provides the “standards, protocol and management arrangements for family planning outreach, using MHCS or not particularly for providing services, namely, bilateral tubal ligation, mini laparotomy under local anesthesia, no-scalpel vasectomy, intrauterine device and subdermal implant.

Under the guidelines, family planning outreach shall be conducted as an “alternative approach where trained and competent team of family planning providers from higher level facilities, like DOH retained hospitals, medical centers and provincial hospitals, perform selected family planning services in lower level host facilities.”

New family planning methods shall be introduced during family planning outreach only after the conduct of health promotion activities.

“The conduct of FP outreach shall be preceded by preliminary activities that justifies the need for FP outreach,” read the administrative order.