DKT International Reaching New Family Planning Clients with Social Franchising

WASHINGTON--(EON: Enhanced Online News)--DKT International, a non-profit family planning and HIV/AIDS prevention organization working in Africa, Asia and Latin America, provides its customers in the developing world secure access to high quality, affordable family planning products and services with public and private clinics, midwives and rural medical practitioners through its social franchising model.

“In 18 countries, we provided over a half-billion condoms, 12 million injectable contraceptives, and 800,000 IUDs – and our social franchises played an increasingly important role in expanding distribution and use of these products.”

“In 2010, DKT served 22 million couples at a cost per couple of less than $2 annually, making us one of the largest private providers of family planning products and services in the developing world,” says Christopher H. Purdy, Executive Vice President of DKT International. “In 18 countries, we provided over a half-billion condoms, 12 million injectable contraceptives, and 800,000 IUDs – and our social franchises played an increasingly important role in expanding distribution and use of these products.” Social franchises are networks of private and sometimes government health providers--whose health products and services are delivered cost-effectively at increasing scale.

Highlights of DKT social franchises include:

India: In 2011, DKT’s flagship social franchising program provided more than 4,000 free female and male sterilizations and abortions in Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, four of India’s poorest states.

Indonesia: the largest contraceptive social marketing program achieved more than 6.2 million Couple Years of Protection (CYPs) in 2011 and has trained more than 40,000 midwives, leading to huge increases in uptake of IUD and long term methods among franchisees. Indonesia is one of the world’s great family planning success stories.
Philippines: 300+ franchised clinics offered contraceptive information, childbirth and newborn screening to nearly 50,000 couples in 2011.
Mozambique: DKT teams move house to house providing family planning options and promoting clinics providing condoms, OCs, IUDs, implants, EC and misoprostol. Social media increases access to its clinics as its Facebook page reaches 6,600+ Mozambicans with information on family planning and reproductive health.
Sudan: DKT’s unique social franchise clinics, called Sahath Al-om (MotherHealth), collaborate to provide family planning with government hospitals, religious organizations, elders of the community, and the husbands, and exemplify a harmonious public and private partnership as recommended by Millennium Development Goal 8.