Assignment Reports
DFID committed 12 million GBP to uplift frontline health workers’ salaries in Sierra Leone from 2010 to 2015 to support the implementation of the Free Healthcare Initiative (FHCI), launched in April 2010, which made health services free for pregnant women, children under five years of age and nursing mothers. Increasing the availability of frontline health… Read more
PRRINN-MNCH has made a significant contribution to improved maternal and child health in Northern Nigeria and has contributed to building stronger health systems and capacity in the four programme States. The programme adopted a comprehensive health systems approach for strengthening primary health care, given the State of health systems in Northern Nigeria at the beginning… Read more
The School for Life (SfL) is an NGO in Northern Ghana running a ‘Literacy for Life Change’ programme. It targets out of school children, between the ages of 8 and 14, and, through an intensive nine-month programme, gives them adequate basic literacy and numeracy skills to enable them to integrate into formal primary schools. The… Read more
Overall the DFID support plan has provided a significant contribution to progress on Ghana’s Education Sector Plan. Output results have been mixed, and specific targets in a number of cases narrowly missed. In summary the headlines are: Gross and Net enrolments have increased, though with the exception of Kindergarten not as much as was expected. Similarly… Read more
This report documents key findings from a MQSUN assignment which aimed to review and support the district gap analysis and planning process for the First 1,000 Most Critical Days Programme in Zambia by strengthening the approach and tools developed for the orientation, gap analysis, and development of district plans; supporting the development of nutrition district… Read more
This paper presents the findings of a MQSUN review on complementary feeding practices. Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and non-RCTs that assessed the impact of complementary feeding and education on complementary feeding on linear growth, weight gain, iron status, and morbidity were included in the review. Broadly, interventions were classified as education on complementary feeding and… Read more
The goal (impact) of the INSTEP was to contribute to keeping Kenya on track to meet MDGs 2 and 3, as indicated by progress in the primary school net enrolment rate (PNER) and the primary school completion rate (PCR). The following purpose (outcome) is reported on: improved access, quality and accountability in both state and… Read more
This paper presents the findings of a nutrition audit for DFID Malawi, which was conducted by MQSUN between June and July 2012. It looks at the extent to which current DFID Malawi programmes and activities already make a contribution to the reduction of undernutrition, the potential for scaling up the existing programmes to contribute to… Read more
This report presents the findings from the Nutrition Audit undertaken by MQSUN from June-July 2012 for the Department for International Development (DFID) Zambia. The objectives for the audit were to: Assess and identify the extent to which DFID Zambia’s current activities and programmes already make a contribution to reduce under-nutrition in Zambia (policy and operations)… Read more
In 2001, DFID made an accountable grant to Population Services International-Kenya, to begin the social marketing of untreated mosquito nets (Supanet) bundled with a liquid insecticide treatment (KO-Tab). Since then, the programme has had five further DFID grants. The impact of these efforts on malaria in Kenya has been dramatic. Malaria admissions to hospitals in… Read more
In terms of skills transfer and capacity development, technical assistance (TA) in the first SWAp in Malawi was a failure. This was partly due to lack of Malawian counterparts with quality staff leaving the service. The TAs were required to do the jobs themselves. It was also partly due to strained professional relationships between staff… Read more