DMPA Injectable Contraceptive Introduction in India

Highlights

Supported nationwide rollout of DMPA training to government healthcare providers
Scaled up tele-counselling platform for family planning (FP) and DMPA users
Health facility visits for strengthening FP and DMPA service quality

The Challenge

India has a high unmet need for FP services, especially contraceptive services for young, newly married, couples with few or no children. The Support to the Public Sector Roll-out of DMPA project addressed this challenge. It provided contraceptive choices so that woman could decide the number and timing of pregnancy. Women who receive high quality FP counseling are more likely to be satisfied with and continue the contraceptive method of their choice. The information and counselling that project activities provide help woman continue their desired contraceptive and increase satisfaction.

The Approach

The Indian government’s introduction of a new contraceptive injectable, DMPA (Depot Medroxyprogesterone Acetate), was a path-breaking policy decision to help millions of young women avert unintended pregnancies. Abt used this opportunity to strengthen health facility readiness, train health providers, and improve client support mechanisms through tele-counselling models. Abt integrated the lessons from past experience strengthening private health clinics into government training guidelines for greater and continued uptake of DMPA.

The project seeks to improve contraceptive choices and reduce unintended pregnancies among women in five states of India through provision of facility-based quality assurance and scaling up Careline tele-counselling services.

The Results

As part of the project’s activities, Abt:

Served as a member of the National Technical expert group, helping prepare training manuals for DMPA and training 200 master trainers for nationwide roll out.
Employed tele-counselling of DMPA users, achieving more than 360,000 counseling contacts, registering 76,000 clients, and demonstrating 68% continuation to third dose.
Conducted facility-based capacity building to improve counselling, screenings, and follow-ups for DMPA and FP, covering 339 health facilities in five states and training more than 3,500 health providers.
Responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by designing DMPA e-modules in three months to replace classroom training and trained 121 master trainers from all the 35 states to support the nationwide government roll out.

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