Assessment of Task Sharing Program in Family Planning and Reproductive Health in Assuit Governorate

The Sustainable Development Goals aim to meet 75% of the global demand for contraception by 2030.To meet these goals, national programs will need to bring together many components, including social and behavior change, a gender and rights perspective, commodities, and quality service provision by adequately trained health providers .

The current unmet needs for health workers that disproportionately affect low- and middle-income countries are anticipated to remain unaddressed for the next decade . It is projected that by 2030, there will be a shortage of 15 million health workers globally . In addition, inequities in the distribution of the existing health workforce within countries, with important rural versus urban differentials in both number and qualification, are worsening the coverage of services in the most deprived, yet high demand areas.

World Health Organization like many other stakeholders evolved the concept of "task sharing," as a promising strategy for addressing the critical lack of health care workers to provide reproductive, maternal, newborn care, enhancing equity in access to birth spacing methods, to obtain the desired method from their nearest service delivery point and protection against unintended pregnancies and thereby avoid costs associated with such pregnancies and of course induced / unsafe abortion.

Task sharing involves the safe expansion of tasks and procedures that are usually performed by higher-level staff to lay- and mid-level healthcare professionals such as midwives, nurses, auxiliaries, clinical officers, and community health workers, especially for the poorer segments of the society .

Task share reflects the intention to include cadres who do not normally have competencies for specific tasks to deliver them and to thereby increase levels of health care access. Moreover, it emphasizes the need for training and continued educational support of all cadres of health workers for them to undertake the tasks they are to perform .