Despite the challenges and difficulties encountered, the implementation of the Country Program (CP) in 2022 has generated results that will contribute to its overall objective.
Sweden's contribution to the CP objective relating to maternal health has enabled the establishment of two functional maternity units.
With regard to obstetric fistula management, the fistula campaign activities have made it possible to manage 354 women with obstetric fistula. The partnership with Sweden contributed directly to the comprehensive care of 24 of these women, including surgical care.
In strengthening the reproductive health system, one of the main outcomes of Sweden's funding of the CP8 gap is the continued supply of contraceptive commodities to Mali over the period 2021-2022. One of the outcomes is the registration of 228,702 new users of contraceptive products in 2022.
Another initiative in the family planning component is the "logistics assistant initiative. Indeed, the bottlenecks noted in the supply of contraceptive products to localities are also part of the gaps to be covered in CP8. Thus, after analysis, UNFPA and its implementing partners in the FP (family planning) component have designed and implemented the "Logistics Assistant" initiative, thanks to a portion of the funds allocated by Sweden. This initiative will also allow us to respond to various problems related to the family planning component, such as the question of collecting and managing data on the availability of products.
As for the results on the Gender and Human Rights component, they concerned several innovative initiatives. Indeed, the issue of menstrual hygiene has been strongly induced in the program which until now was not covered by any available funding. The support of Sweden allowed the national celebration of the international day of menstrual hygiene management with the distribution of more than 1000 kits for the high school girls, 1000 kits for the housewives and women of the Fama as well as 500 kits distributed to the high school girls of Mopti and Bamako during the international day of the young girl. UNFPA organized awareness sessions on menstrual hygiene management and human rights and a conference targeting youth and adolescent girls. Another important aspect of the gender component that benefited from Sweden's support was the work with religious leaders, who were strengthened in order to provide awareness sessions and community communication for a positive masculinity and knowledge of girls' and women's rights to young couples and future couples, as well as the twinning of the Daoudabougou Mosque with the One Stop Center CV in order to integrate religious leaders into the referral system of GBV cases in the community.
In line with objective 5 of the program, which focuses on the development of statistics, Sweden's support contributed to the General Census of Population and Housing. Thus, the partnership with Sweden allowed for the realization of a study related to the demographic dividend, the financing of capacity building activities for the RGPH (Census in Mali) and contributed to the support of the international expert in charge of the supervision
