POPULATION ADVISOR PROJECT MINISTRY OF PUBLIC HEALTH ...

In fact, the HIID/USAID project not only trained most of the
clinical staff at the Assiam Vamtou Center, but spent a lot of
resources on the national director for MCH/FP who was appointed to
the position in 1987 and who knew nothing about contraceptives nor
family planning.
As the family planning project continued training staff through
a variety of U.S. donor organizations, a cadre of professionals
were learning about the clinical, administrative and sociopolitical
aspects of the program. The project's short and longterm
objectives included a series of strategies built on the
attainment of each preceding activity. For example, training was
and should always remain an on-going activity. It was felt that
once the new law was in place, contraceptives would be imported and
distributed and that those trained would become the emerging
leaders as the government moved forward to introducing a national
family planning program.
Efforts were also made early on in the project to train the
Director of the School of Public Health and Social Services to
develop the recognition for the need to introduce a curriculum in
family planning during each of the three years for nurses, midwives
and social workers.
The adoption and integration of family planning into MCH
activities is usually a major problem due to the lack of motivation
and training of health workers. Unfortunately, in Francophone
Africa family planning remains a specialized technical addition to
clinical practice and it is never taught as a "complete fit" into
the notion of comprehensive family health care. Hopefully this
potential obstacle will be overcome in Chad.
At the end of the project (2 years) there were 250 Chadians
trained in short-term family planning courses. See Appendix II
for the official list of trainees by name, sponsoring
organizations, subject and country.
The principal organizations responsible for family planning
training activities in Chad during 1986-1988 were:
1. INTRAH
2. JHPIEGO/Morocco, Senegal, Baltimore
3. CEDPA
4. Columbia University/Abidjan
5. CAFS
6. UNFPA/Mauritius
III. Contraceptive Procurement
In mid-1987 the mission requested technical assistance from
Family Planning International Assistance (FPIA) to help the
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