Facility and Mobile Reproductive Health Kits for Disasters and Crises

DESCRIPTION

Full Title: Facility and Mobile Reproductive Health Kits for Disasters and Crises

Short Title: Facility and Mobile Kits

Duration: March 2025 – March 2026

Funder: ESRC/AHRC SHAPE Catalyst delivered by the ARC Accelerator

Core Team: Prof. Nibedita Ray-Bennett (PI), Mr Alex Skinner and Dr Te Klangboonkrong (Project Coordinators)

Collaborators (Bangladesh): Dr Elvina Mustary (RHSTEP), Mr Maqbul Bhuiyan (DMA)

Collaborators (India): TBC

Objectives:

-To engage with potential customers, stakeholders, and pharmaceutical companies to develop a comprehensive business model for introducing the Facility and Mobile Kits in India and Bangladesh.

-To explore the ventures that need to be adopted, such as establishing a spin-out company or a country-specific partnership agreement with suppliers.

-To embark on a venture to introduce the Kits and secure one investor.

Facility and RH Kits

The Facility and Mobile Kits are designed to treat incomplete abortion, missed abortion and post-abortion care management (before and after 12 weeks of missed period of menstruation) during disasters and humanitarian crises. These Kits consist of lifesaving medicines, equipment, consumables and information, education and communication materials.

The Kits are developed based on the principles of localisation – one that gives agency to national actors to develop RH kits with locally sourced medicines, supplies, equipment, and guidelines in readiness for disaster response. Kits can be administered by the suitably trained existing health workforce mandated for handling menstrual regulation and post-abortion (viz. nurses, medical officers, family welfare visitors, and sub-assistant community medical officers) in low and middle-income countries.

Conditions required to position the Facility and Mobile RH Kits

The Facility and Mobile Kits must be pre-positioned at primary, secondary or tertiary health facilities (nearer to flood/cyclone shelters in the case of Mobile Kit) before the flood or cyclone season (January to March).

Components

The Facility RH Kit has two options: i) Post-Abortion Care (PAC); ii) Post-Abortion Care (PAC) & Menstrual Regulation (MR). Each option comes in three sizes (small/medium/large). The Mobile Kit comes in one standard small size to ensure portability.  

Users, Beneficiaries and Benefits

Users

  • National and local governments
  • Humanitarian organisations and NGOs
  • Private clinics and healthcare practitioners

Beneficiaries

  • Poor and vulnerable women of reproductive age in disaster and crises

 Benefits

  • Kits are cost-effective and can increase the provision and continuity of RH services during disasters and crises;
  • They can reduce maternal and neonatal mortality by increasing access to healthcare to the beneficiaries;
  • Can contribute towards the UN’s Minimum Initial Service Package (MISP), the Sphere Minimum Standards in Disaster Response, SDG 3 (Target 5.6) and Sendai Goal A and Priority for Action 4; and
  • Governments and developmental agencies with limited resources can be supported to achieve the Goals above using our Facility and Mobile Kits and capacity-building provision.

Links to the earlier phases of the Facility and Mobile (renamed from Crisis) RH Kits: https://www.avoidable-deaths.net/prototyping-rh-kits/

Project Updates

April 19, 2025: The dates for our stakeholder engagement workshops have been agreed: Tuesday 27 May and Friday 30 May, from 1400-1600 UK time. We are getting in touch with people who have an interest in reproductive health in disasters across South Asia and selected countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. If you would like to be involved, please do get in touch with the project coordinators or ADN on the Join page.

April 7, 2025: The Bangladesh project team met to discuss the next steps in introducing the kits to the disaster response ecosystem in the country.

March 30, 2025: We attended the London Model World Health Organization (LonWHO) to see health issues debated and resolutions agreed, and build our network. We were most interested in hearing the effects of climate change on global health in relation to disasters, and impressed by how future generations aim to tackle this challenge. As climate-related disasters become more prevalent and affect more people, our lifesaving Facility and Mobile Kits will have an ever more important role in saving the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in disasters.

March 17, 2025: The team are well underway with ARC Accelerator trainings on the ESRC/AHRC SHAPE Catalyst programme, and have undertaken six sessions so far. The focus has been on Market Validation – how to present the Facility and Mobile Kits to potential customers to understand their interest and viability.

March 10, 2025: Our press release has gone live, as the project gets underway! https://le.ac.uk/news/2025/march/leicester-lifesaving-abortion-kits-women-asia

March 3, 2025: The project was launched on March 3, 2025!