Lady Health Workers (LHWs) Program is an initiative of public health sector that extends outreach health services (family planning, immunization, obstetrics care, nutrition, etc.) to rural populations and urban slum communities through deployment of nearly 100,000
LHWs across the country. During 2018-19, Ipas Pakistan, an INGO, collaborated with the IRMNCH&N Program of DOH – Punjab to implement a two year (2018-19) project
in 10 districts of Punjab for the Capacity Building of LHWs as community intermediaries for “Uterine Evacuation (UE) and Post Abortion Care & Family Planning” (PAC&FP)
services.

On successful implementation of interventions, Ipas desired to conduct a KAP study to see its impact. Pak One Health Alliance® through an open competitive process, signed an agreement with Ipas Pakistan to carry out KAP study for LHWs on the Ipas developed SBC tools and key messages on UE/PAC services through survey and qualitative process during Oct – Dec 2020.

Introduction: High occurrence of missed or induced abortion cases (approx. 2.2 million cases, including 700,000 cases of post-abortion complications) reported during 2013 (Population Council, Islamabad) showing use of unsafe methods of abortion, poor access to post abortion care services, and lack of information on safe abortion and family planning methods. Under the circumstance, Ipas experimented an innovative way to benefit women through their interventions aimed to eliminate barriers, women face for seeking care—which include stigma, discrimination, the lack of social support and power to make one’s own reproductive health
decisions.

There was thus a strong need to enhance the capacity and role of healthcare delivery system in general and the community based services in particular for providing easy to access essential safe abortion care and contraceptive services to the community- mainly to reduce out- of pocket expenses. The purpose behind this study was to measure the impact of Ipas efforts & investment, through a third party evaluation for the Knowledge, Attitude & Practices (KAP) of LHWs on Ipas developed SBC tools & key messages on UE/PAC.