Consultancy for Documentation of Tanzania’s Success in Reduction of Maternal Mortality

 Improving women’s health and reducing morbidity and mortality remains the global agenda as it is stipulated by the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs 2030). The UN team including UNFPA, envisions a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person’s potential is fulfilled with the goal of ending preventable maternal deaths. The SDG targets reducing the global burden of maternal mortality to less than 70 per 100,000 livebirths and neonatal deaths to less than 12 per 1,000 livebirths by 2030 among other goals. Tanzania development vision 2020-2025 calls for improvement of the quality of reproductive health services and three-quarters reduction of maternal and infant mortality. In the same vein, the commitment for reduction of Maternal Mortality is articulated by Tanzania Five Years’ Development Plan (2021- 2025), the Health sector strategic plan V (HSSP V, 2021-2026) and the National Plan for Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health & Nutrition (One plan III-2021-2026). Several high impact interventions have been implemented countrywide at varying scales to respond to these targets across the six WHO’s health systems strengthening blocks. These efforts have yielded promising results as the burden of maternal mortality has declined substantially. The 2023 report of UNInteragency group for maternal mortality estimation (UN-MMEIG) capturing the trend of 2000-2020, reports that maternal Mortality in Tanzania declined by about 70% to 238 deaths per 100,000 livebirths. The report further highlights that, for the previous two decades, the annual maternal mortality reduction rate (ARR) in Tanzania has averaged 6% which is nearly three-times faster than the global rate (2.1%). Furthermore, the recent Tanzania Demographic Health Survey have reported unprecedented decline of maternal mortality from 556 to 104 per 100,000 live births in 2015/2016 and 2022 respectively. This calls for a well-designed process to document, describe and disseminate a package of interventions that contributed to these achievements. The documentation will contribute to defining a set of interventions for sustaining the current gains and accelerate efforts towards SDG in Tanzania and other similar low-resource settings globally. Tanzanian Training Centre for International Health (TTCIH) is seeking candidates that transform, inspire and deliver high impact and sustained results; we need staff who are transparent, exceptional in how they document Maternal Health interventions that relate to morbidity and mortality reduction.

Purpose of Consultancy

To undertake documentation of Tanzania’s success in reduction of Maternal Mortality