SFH is the key organization focusing on sales and marketing activities for the female condom in Zambia. Care is distributed through several channels, including pharmacies, drug stores, hair salons, barbershops, and VCT centers and in partnership with nongovernmental organizations.
In 2002, SFH began offering Voluntary Counselling and Testing services by opening a New Start center in downtown Lusaka. New Start now operates fixed sites in Kitwe, Chipata, Mansa, Solwezi, Ndola, Livingstone and two sites in Lusaka, as well as nine mobile VCT units. Together these sites counsel and test over 10,000 clients per month. SFH will launched a mass media campaign in 2009 to encourage couples to seek VCT services.
Clinical trials in South Africa, Uganda and Kenya estimate that a circumcised man is approximately 60 percent less likely to contract HIV than an uncircumcised man. Since 2007, SFH has offered male circumcision services through a combination of fixed sites, private sector franchises and mobile MC services through government hospitals and rural health centers.
SFH seeks to improve reproductive, maternal and child health through improved access to and use of long-term family planning methods. Over the next few years, SFH will improve access to and use of IUDs and implants by supporting overburdened urban and under-supported rural MOH clinics, piloting immediate post-partum IUD insertion in collaboration with UTH and MOH, and improving the quality and range of RH services offered by private providers.
Post-partum hemorrhage is the leading cause of maternal deaths in Zambia. Most deliveries take place at home or in a rudimentary clinic that does not have sufficient trained staff, drugs or equipment to deal with the post-partum hemorrhage that contributes to 34% of all maternal mortality. Conclusive field studies have proven that a three-pill dose of the drug misoprostol, given to a woman immediately after she delivers, will significantly reduce PPH incidence. In addition to implementing its own PPH intervention, SFH will support the Zambian Ministry of Health’s pilot PPH prevention program.
SFH partners with the National Malaria Control Center in a nationwide project to distribute Mama Safenite LLINs in an effort to prevent malaria. As a national implementer of the Malaria in Pregnancy program, SFH has rolled out the program to all nine provinces. The program is managed throughout District Health Management Team centers and then through ante-natal clinics at district and ward levels, making free nets easily accessible to pregnant women and children under five.
SFH launched Clorin in 1998 to protect low-income Zambians from contaminated water. To date, the program has sold or distributed over 17 million bottles of Clorin, each of which protects a family of six for a month.