District Level

Informing and engaging all the relevant district leaders

The purpose of this step is to inform leaders in the district – including political leaders, heads of different government departments, religious leaders, and prominent members of civil society organizations – about the rationale for the initiative, what it seeks to do, and what it seeks to achieve; and to obtain their support for it. Depending on the country, this could be done by national health officials or by state/provincial/regional level health officials. District health officials will obviously be involved but will not be asked to take the lead in this.

Illustrative example:

In Tanzania, the Ministry of Health, in collaboration with development partners, has carried out so called 'advocacy meetings' for stakeholders from entire regions including facility, district and regional level participants. In the first years of the programme 10 out of the 21 regions of the country had been oriented and advocacy materials had been sent to all regions.

In Mozambique sensitizing the communities was done as part of the roll out at the district level. The objective was to mobilize community support and to create demand for the services.  The media, such as local radio can play an important role.

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