Takamol: Integrated Maternal Child Health, Family Planning and Reproductive Health Project

Takamol’s combined efforts working with communities for grassroots change and at the health system level for institutional change left Egyptian women and their families with increased access to higher-quality health and family planning services.

In March, 2006, Pathfinder was awarded a contract from USAID to conduct a new five-year project in Egypt known as Takamol. Named after the Arabic word for "integration," Takamol promoted an integrated model for strengthening maternal and child health, family planning, and reproductive health services. As the culmination of nearly three decades of USAID assistance to Egypt in these areas, Takamol worked to prepare the Egyptian Ministry of Health and Population to fully support and sustain these services as USAID continued to phase out its assistance.

Specifically, the project:

• Supported the Ministry of Health in training and building the capacity of its health system managers, service providers and staff;
• Scaled up global and Egyptian best practices to ensure that high quality integrated services are available at the community level; and
• Encouraged the committed involvement of male and female religious leaders, corporations, local businesses, and civil society in taking ownership of community health.

Project interventions targeted 200 primary health care units in 12 Upper and Lower Egypt governorates, selected urban poor areas in Cairo, Giza, and Alexandria, and 25 district/general hospitals in Lower Egypt.

The Takamol integrated model strengthened the capacities of these facilities to better serve the needs of their communities through renovations and the provision of equipment, training, outreach, and community participation. Two cross-cutting themes, gender and social responsibility, were also woven into all of the project's activities so that communities and corporations contributed to health care improvement and facilitated women's empowerment.