Community health
Newsflash! To see our work in action, tune into Simon Reeve's BBC2 Indian Ocean series, available on iPlayer until 10 June. Blue Ventures' integrated community health work is featured in Episode 2.
We recognise the link between human health, human populations and their environment. We see how rapid population growth, caused largely by an unmet need for family planning services, drives unsustainable resource use, damaging the environment and ultimately deepening poverty.
"I wholeheartedly congratulate the Velondriake project... Population growth is clearly one of the main drivers of all our environmental problems. Good family planning support must therefore be an essential part of all long-term solutions. It is wonderfully encouraging to see this truth being demonstrated so clearly and successfully. The project is surely a model for everyone working to conserve the natural life-support systems of our troubled planet."
-Sir David Attenborough
In response to an unmet need for health care and health education, Blue Ventures is providing a range of health services, addressing reproductive health, maternal and child health, sanitation and hygiene practices and the provision of safe water.
By integrating the delivery of these services into the portfolio of projects that Blue Ventures manages, we are able to achieve our health and conservation objectives more effectively.
Family planning
In 2007, before Blue Ventures started to provide health services, women and couples would have to walk 50km through spiny forest to the nearest family planning clinic. There was no health education available. Age of sexual debut for girls was as young as eight, most girls were pregnant before their eighteenth birthday and women were having up to 20 children (with an average of seven births per woman). Quite apart from the huge health and social impact of couples having so many children, and women having children at such a young age, the population of the region was growing so rapidly that demand for the finite coastal resources was beginning to outstrip supply.
Now, women from 40 villages along the coast and inland in the adjacent forest can access high quality family planning services close to their own homes. Women and couples are empowered to choose the size and spacing of their families, girls can choose to delay getting pregnant and finish their education if they wish to do so. The proportion of women using contraception has risen fourfold, and we have witnessed a drop in the birth rate by one third.
Family planning services are provided by our outreach clinics, where clinical staff travel from village to village, and by our team of community based distributors. Long acting and permanent methods of contraception are offered through our partnership with Marie Stopes Madagascar.
Watch the video above to learn more about about our experiences of integrating family planning into our conservation activities.
Maternal and child health
99% of all maternal deaths occur in the developing world. Lack of access to even the most basic maternal and child health services in our region means that the maternal mortality rate remains unacceptably high, and one in nine children died before their fifth birthday. The vast majority of these deaths are avoidable. In response to this situation, Blue Ventures has implemented a maternal and child health programme, with the aim of improving health outcomes for mothers and young children. We will be providing a programme of antenatal and postnatal care to all pregnant women in our region, and working with local government health institutions to ensure provision of safe birthing facilities and a full childhood vaccination programme.
Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH)
Lack of access to fresh water in this arid part of Madagascar causes significant problems for coastal communities. Lack of awareness of the importance of good sanitation and hygiene compounds these problems. The water is unsafe to drink; they lack the means to purify it, and are unable protect their water from contamination. Diarrhoea remains the commonest cause of death in young children. Blue Ventures’ Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) programme aims to improve access to fresh water by building new wells where they are most needed, and to provide communities with the means of purifying their drinking water. Through their community education programme, Blue Ventures will enable communities to adopt safer sanitation and hygiene practices.
Health education
Sustained improvements in health will only occur if the provision of health services is accompanied by health education. Blue Ventures’ rich and diverse community health education programme aims to empower communities to make healthier choices, whether these choices relate to reproductive health, healthier children or safer sanitation practices.
Watch the video above to learn more about how we have used a football tournament to provide community education.
Where we work in Madagascar
Health Reports
In April 2012, Blue Ventures published a paper in the International Conservation Journal Oryx entitled, "Integrating family planning service provision into community-based marine conservation". Please contact us if you would like to know more.
