Objectives
i) Describe a proven model (for vitamin A + albendazole deployment) developed by Vitamin Angels over the past 8 years that already reaches very large numbers of at-risk and hard-to-reach beneficiaries including those that national health systems find difficult to reach, and discuss how this platform can be leveraged to support large-scale deployment of multi-micronutrient supplements for hard-to-reach pregnant women,ii) Define the need and opportunities for alternative distribution models to achieve large-scale deployment of multi-micronutrient supplements to at-risk and hard-to-reach pregnant women by leveraging the above model.iii) Examine and review progress/preliminary success and lessons learned/challenges identified relevant to deployment of multi-micronutrient supplements for pregnant women using this platform.
Methods
Test deployment of multimicronutrient supplements is achieved through a subset of nearly 800+ Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) field partners who co-administer vitamin A + albendazole to almost 50m at-risk and hard to reach pre-school aged children annually in 54 countries. This platform of NGO field partners affords easy access to women of reproductive age — including women already pregnant.
Results
Approximately 400,000 pregnant, hard to reach women have received mulit-micronutrient supplements each year for the past 2 years; NGO field partners have absorbed all local costs of distribution; and field partners rely on Vitamin Angels only for the micronutrient supplements delivered to a port of entry and modest technical assistance.
Conclusions
The platform can be successfully used to reach hard-to-reach, at-risk beneficiaries without access to national health services or whom national health services find hard to reach. A challenge is not utility of the platform, but whether sufficient supplements can be made available to meet absorptive capacity of the platform.
