On 29 August 2022, Barame Intervention had a full-day review on Action Researches protocol, their progress implementation and way forward towards bringing changes to maternal, neonatal, child and adolescent sexual and reproductive health in the seven supported districts.

Barame intervention focuses on three main results: (1) Improvement initiatives for integrated quality MNCH&FP/ASRH services from community up to Hospital level are conducted for all; (2) A comprehensive life cycle SRH model focusing on sexual and gender-based violence, teenage pregnancies and drug & substance abuse is implemented and (3) The self-reliance (knowledge, attitudes, and practices) of the community with regards to their (sexual and reproductive) health through social, behavioural and community engagement efforts is enhanced.

Among other action research projects, the intervention is working on:
1.        Availability of functional medical equipment to improve quality of services:   This project aims at assessing how vital medical equipment are contributing to new-born and maternal health lifesaving. The early findings show that some of non-functioning equipment could be repaired by the hospital biomedical engineer or simple spare part could be purchased from the hospital budget.  Changes in management mindset for the proper use of the biomedical engineers of the hospital, equipment curative and preventive maintenance practice, the inclusion of these costs into their own budget is progressively taken into consideration by different hospital partners.  

2.       Improve youth friendly sexual and reproductive health services: This action research aims to increase the utilization of Adolescent Sexual Reproduction Health (ASRH) services by making the services available to youth, by reducing stigma through offering SRH services at the youth centers, where many leisure activities for youth take place; combined with a network of peer educators who live in the same community as the youth. Also, by making the youth centre functional.  In total, the number of youths who  sought ASRH services at the youth centre was five times as high,  compared to the first semester of 2021.

3.       Obstetric Ultrasound services for antenatal care to increase the coverage of the first antenatal care visit and to detect early pregnancy risk or anomalies. The WHO (2016) recommends one ultrasound scan before 24 weeks of gestation to amongst others, estimate gestational age (GA) to reduce, for instance, inappropriate induction of labour, improve detection of foetal anomalies and multiple pregnancies, and improve a woman’s pregnancy experience on which the Ministry of Health is aligned, Barame supplied obstetrical ultrasound machines to Health centres and trained health providers for piloting that strategy. Being a very expensive equipment going at large scale need evidence-based data to prove its impact on maternal health.
More findings on quality of training and mentorship, Health providers on the interpretation of diagnosis need to be well analysed before the scaling up of the strategy.    

The action researches are being conducted in partnership with the Rwanda Biomedical Centre.