The UNFPA-UNICEF joint programme for Health System Strengthening and Social Accountability aims to ensure that women, adolescents and children in rural Zambia have equitable access to – and use – quality reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health and nutrition services within a strong, accountable health system.

The DFID-funded project launched in late 2017 and will run through 2021 in Zambia’s Central and Western Provinces. It takes a human rights-based approach to the design, implementation and monitoring of services, incorporating an equity perspective to protect the rights of vulnerable and marginalized women, young people and children.

The project focuses on enhancing access to and demand for high-impact interventions by improving supply of essential medicines and equipment, bolstering infrastructure, instituting guidelines and protocols to ensure quality of services, and building the capacities of staff.

A community engagement component serves to increase demand for services and encourage greater interaction between communities, civil society and health systems, while participatory community monitoring serves to make these more responsive to the needs of women and children, especially those most vulnerable.