Resources

In Tanzania, a health facility serves as the first point of contact for vaccination and birth notification while the Registration, Insolvency and Trusteeship Agency (RITA) is mandated for birth registration and provision of birth certificates. At health facilities, newborns are provided with a child health card and notification card that instructs parents to process the birth certificate at RITA offices, which are decentralized at the district level.In 2015, birth certificates’ coverage for children under 5 years was under 50 percent, according to RITA, compared to birth notification provided at health facilities. This low coverage of birth certificates was due to several factors, including delays of parents in visiting RITA offices, loss of birth notification cards in the first 90 days, limited awareness of birth certificates, and inadequate tracking of records.These factors motivated the Ministry of Health (MOH), through the Immunization and Vaccine Development (IVD) Program and RITA, to initiate the registration of births and provision of birth certificates be conducted concurrently at health facilities. This intended to improve immunization service delivery as well as birth registration and coverage of birth certificates in the country.Since the launch of this initiative in June 2015, the number of registrations of children under 5 years old increased from 13 percent in 2012 to 65 percent in 2021.In this document we describe the process of integrating the electronic Tanzania Immunization Registry (TImR) and the Under 5 Birth Registration System to improve birth registration coverage. We also share lessons learned on the integration process of the two systems.

Human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine programs in low- and middle-income countries face financial, programmatic, and social barriers to the introduction and sustainability of these programs. An HPV vaccine delivered through a microarray patch (MAP) could offer potential advantages to address some of those barriers. We asked global experts and stakeholders in Ethiopia about the acceptability and programmatic suitability of this option. In this report, we share the input from these stakeholders, both in terms of programmatic advantages and concerns regarding an HPV vaccine MAP, as well as some of their desired attributes.

Primary health care (PHC) includes the most basic package of essential health services and products that are needed to prevent disease, promote health, and manage illness—covering about 80 percent of a person’s health needs over their lifetime.That’s why PHC systems are widely recognized as central to the pursuit of health equity. At every stage of life, access to integrated PHC makes a meaningful difference in a person’s health and wellbeing.At PATH, we bring together end-to-end system innovation, transformative partnerships, and evidence-based decision-making to help countries and multisectoral partners reimagine PHC—through a people-centered approach that gives everyone a fair chance at health and protects against health threats.Download our fact sheet to learn more about how we are accelerating people-centered PHC.

Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes, are the leading cause of mortality in the world. Every year, 41 million people die from NCDs, 15 million of them between the ages of 30 and 69. Despite the many proven solutions, progress has been slow and uneven globally. This document provides an overview of the NCD ecosystem, a description of primary findings, and recommendations for future action. Findings and recommendations are presented across four pillars—Access, Integrated Models of Care, Capacity Building, and Sustainability Efforts—to organize the information and analysis with a view toward the prioritization of gaps and opportunities for intervention and partnership, especially for non-state actors.The landscape identifies several enabling factors required to address the key barriers impacting NCD care, alongside intervention opportunities with a specific focus on hypertension and diabetes. The enabling factors are organized into four quadrants adapted from the WHO’s NCD capacity domains and subsequently mapped along a pathway to scale to identify archetypes of country capacity levels. The assessment is timely as countries set their universal health coverage (UHC) roadmaps.

Drawing on PATH’s global expertise working in primary health care (PHC) for more than 40 years, as well as deep engagement in Kenya, where PATH has supported the government for more than 30 years, PATH regularly serves as a technical partner to the Kenyan government on PHC policy adoption and implementation at both the national and subnational levels. This factsheet highlights examples as well as priorities for future work.