Maputo Plan of Action Five Year Review

In 2006 the Special Session of African Union Health Ministers adopted the Maputo Plan of Action for implementing the Continental Policy Framework on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights. This review was conducted by the African Union Commission in 2010 to inform members of the African Union and other stakeholders of the progress made in its implementation.Based on findings from both primary and secondary data, the report identifies the challenges encountered by those member states in the process of implementing the plan, as well as good practices, and lessons learnt. Finally, it proposes recommendations for the next steps in the promotion of sexual and reproductive health and rights. It calls for the plan to be extended to 2015 to coincide reaching the Millennium Development Goals.The progress report found that the main challenges and lessons highlighted by almost all the countries that took part in the review relate to:

• inadequate resources
• weak health systems
• inequities in access
• weak multi-sector response
• low priority to health in national development plans
• and inadequate data.

Some of the lessons learnt facilitating implementation include:

• Increased partnerships are important for scale up and rational use of scarce resources.
• Leveraging resources from different programmes that are funded helps to promote sexual and reproductive health.
• Resources are not enough – there needs to be a rational use of resources and the enhancing of demand for family planning.
• Micro-finance projects are useful for promoting maternal and child health
• The launch of CARMMA is creating more awareness.

Some of the lessons learnt impeding implementation include:

• Weak health systems remain a challenge to quality service delivery.
• Top-down approaches negatively impact on community participation.
• Lack of dedicated budget for sexual and reproductive health has a negative effect on service delivery.
• Inadequate legislation on safe abortion or criminalisation of abortion does not reduce abortions occurring.

A number of recommendations are provided based on the challenges identified, in order to help implement sexual and reproductive health and rights strategies more comprehensively, including:

• Ensure availability of skilled human resources for sexual and reproductive health and make sure there are incentives in place to motivate them.
• Promote adequate, integrated, and comprehensive health services
• Strengthen emergency obstetric care and include.
• Increase percentage of national budget resources allocated to health care to at least 15% - as called for in the 2001 Abuja Declaration.

• The Maputo Plan of Action should be extended for the period 2010-2015 to coincide with the targets of the Millennium Development Goals.
• Other health and cross cutting issues should also be covered such as food security, HIV/AIDS, poverty reduction, and climate change.
• CARMMA should be used as an advocacy tool.
• More domestic and international resources should be mobilised and used rationally.
• Partnerships should be strengthened, coordinated, and harmonised.

• Four next steps were provided to support the full implementation of the recommendations:

A comprehensive five-year review of the status of the implementation should be submitted to the African Union Organs in early 2015.To read this report, click here.African Union Commission. (2011). Maputo Plan of Action Five Year Review. Maputo: African Union.