On #WorldHealthDay 2024, The Challenge Initiative’s (TCI’s) Francophone West Africa (FWA) hub celebrates health workers like Diouf Halimatou Biteye, a midwife in Thiès, Senegal. World Health Day took place on April 7, 2024, with the theme of #MyHealthMyRight. Biteye embodies this theme by supporting the right for families in her community to plan the number, timing, and spacing of their children.
Biteye – head midwife in the maternity ward at the Sampathé Health Post, Thiès Health District – is a TCI-trained master coach, supporting efforts to scale up high-impact family planning and reproductive health interventions for the urban poor. She said:
We face a variety of challenges, such as unwanted early pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections, and delayed access to care. We also have a shortage of qualified personnel to meet the demand, which negatively impacts maternal, neonatal, and infant mortality rates.”
TCI supports local governments in FWA to strengthen the capacity of health workers like Biteye to provide high-quality family planning services. This includes cities in Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, and Senegal that are scaling up interventions such as postpartum family planning and universal referral, where all women visiting a health facility are counseled and offered family planning services. Biteye noted:
On-site coaching truly helps me and my colleagues improve the delivery of quality services, especially in family planning.”
Heartened to see a platform such as TCI encouraging local governments to invest in the well-being of health care workers, Biteye said:
With TCI, we see mayors mobilizing resources to better support us in our work, and this initiative deserves recognition. It is imperative that all health care professionals – nurses, community health workers, doctors, pharmacists, etc. – receive adequate training, adequate protection, and fair remuneration.”
