Subject: ORSZCA UPDATE: Global Fund to support improved ORS/Zinc access
Subheading: Global Fund gets more holistic

Welcome to the ORSZCA UPDATE for Dec 2022

GLOBAL ORS/ZINC STATUS

We continue to update and share our resource on the ORS and Zinc status around the world – orszco-pack.org/orsz-status. You can help by adding to the resource either by commenting on the ORSZCA website or by completing a questionnaire in English or French.

THE GLOBAL FUND WILL FINANCE ORS AND ZINC IN THE NEXT FUNDING ROUND

ORSZCA welcomes a major new policy shift by The Global Fund, to provide co-financing to eligible countries for the provision of ORS and Zinc to children under five years, as part of their support for Integrated Community Case Management (iCCM) programmes. 

A highly informative webinar, run by the Child Health Task Force on 7-Dec-22 can be reviewed here: THE GLOBAL FUND WILL FINANCE ORSZ FOR UNDER-5 DIARRHOEA IN ELIGIBLE ICCM PROGRAMMES (English only). This is an excellent document with detailed advice and methods on how one might make the case for diarrhoea treatment with ORS and Zinc. It also contains background for those new to The Global Fund and links to the key materials.

If you’d like to listen to the webinar again the recording is here: https://www.childhealthtaskforce.org/events/2022/12/information-session-new-opportunities-improving-funding-iccm-through-global-fund

The recording includes interpretations in different languages.

So, what are the key messages and next steps for those advocating for improved access to co-packaged ORS and Zinc?

• Until now, The Global Fund has focussed on HIV/AIDS, Malaria and TB. As the Fund expands to support Community Health Worker (CHW) distribution of a wider range of essential medicines for children, we need a proactive effort to make sure ORS and Zinc are included in bids, and specifically in co-pack form. This will require the active engagement of new advocates in LMIC, outside the specialisations of HIV/AIDS, Malaria and TB, who may not have previous experience of The Global Fund.
• You are encouraged to contact the Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM) in your country to see how to engage and participate. You would do this through the CCM administrative contact. As well as an administrative contact, there is normally a CCM Chair and Vice Chair. The full CCM details for all countries can be found here: https://data-service.theglobalfund.org/viewer/cm_contacts
  As a quick reference, the current CCM Administrators for the Anglophone countries in the  top 10 high burden childhood diarrhoea countries are

ETHIOPIA
Mr. Abayneh  ADMAS
abayneha74@gmail.com
Mr Dagim  MENGISTU
martadagim@gmail.com 

INDIA
Ms Gitanjali  MOHANTY
India CCM Coordinator
iccmsect-mohfw@gov.in
Ms Sandhya  GUPTA
India CCM Coordinator
dr.sandhyagupta@live.com
Dr Shobini  RAJAN
shobini@naco.gov.in

NIGERIA
Mrs Ishioma  JOHN
Finance and Admin. Officer
isiskie@gmail.com

PAKISTAN
Mr Hafiz Hammad  MURTAZA
CCM Coordinator
hamad@ccmpakistan.org.pk 

SOMALIA
Mr Ahmed  HASSAN
Secretariat Coordinator
assistant@gfscs.org

Some of the key features of the 2023-2025 Global Fund Strategy are:

• The Global Fund Strategy has CHWs and iCCM at its heart. It will support the provision of ORS and Zinc at the community level. It will NOT support the management of diarrhoea cases in health facilities.  For this reason, co-packaging has huge potential to improve the likelihood that children receive both ORS and Zinc when treated in the home, helping to underpin  the ‘rational use’ requirements of successful bids. 
• The focus is on children under five years of age.
• Co-financing is needed.
• Funding is not just for provision of medicine: applicants will have to identify gaps in their CHW expansion plans, to include Human Resources for Health (HRH) planning and recruitment, training, remuneration etc. Note that HRH may sometimes be abbreviated as HHR (Health Human Resources).
• Financing is part of The Global Fund’s Resilient and Sustainable Systems for Health (RSSH) grants: successful applications will need strong Health Management Information Systems (HMIS), access to data and alignment with national health strategies.

Key resources:

• The recording of the Child Health Task Force Webinar.
• The documentation (slidedeck and links to key tools) arising from the above webinar (English only).
• The details of the members of the Global Fund Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM) in your country (English only).
• The Global Fund’s own iLearn platform (English only).
• The Global Fund 2023-2028 Strategy (English) (French)

Please let us know about your experience engaging with this new opportunity, especially in areas where ORSZCA might be able to support.

Thank you.

Morseda and Samy
ORSZCA Co-chairs

Dr Morseda Chowdhury
Director of Health, Nutrition and Population Programme
BRAC, Bangladesh

Samy Ahmar
Head of Health
Save the Children, UK

Subject: ORSZCA UPDATE: Global ORS/Zinc Status, Child Health Spotlights, DHS, Website now in French

Welcome to the ORSZCA UPDATE

GLOBAL ORS/ZINC STATUS

We continue to update and share our resource on the ORS and Zinc status around the world – orszco-pack.org/orsz-status. You can help by adding to the resource either by commenting on the ORSZCA website or by completing a questionnaire in English or French.

CHILD HEALTH SPOTLIGHTS – UNICEF & SAVE THE CHILDREN

UNICEF and Save the Children have collaborated to share 15 “high-burden” country profiles focussed on pneumonia and diarrhoea and in particular how to protect, prevent and diagnose and treat these two diseases – see childhealthspotlights.org. Our concern is that the resource makes no mention of ORS or Zinc for the treatment of diarrhoea. We are in communication with those behind the site in an attempt to get this corrected. This is particularly important as the site is designed to “help inform policy and decision-making at national and global levels”. We have also suggested that profiles are added for Cameroon and Madagascar which are both in the top 10 high-burden diarrhoea countries.

DHS QUESTION ON CO-PACKAGED ORS AND ZINC

As a network focussed on accelerating the uptake of co-packaged ORS and Zinc, we are interested in how we monitor the uptake of this 2019 WHO recommendation. With this in mind, we have been in contact with ICF, which has implemented the USAID-supported Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) Program since 1984, with a view to modifying the questions within the DHS that relate to diarrhoea treatment to gather information on co-pack usage. The DHS questionnaires are reviewed every five years and the next opportunity to engage in this process will be in the last quarter of 2023. Between now and then we will be consulting with the ORSZCA network on how the DHS questionnaire might be usefully modified to collect this data. If you can contribute to this effort please email simon.berry@orszco-pack.org.

ORS/ZINC CO-PACK MANUFACTURERS

We have updated our information on ORS/Zinc Co-pack manufacturers around the world but would like your input in ensuring the list is as complete and correct as possible. Please add any amendments or additions by commenting on our manufacturers page here: ORS/ZINC CO-PACK MANUFACTURERS. Your comments will not be published directly on the website but will be used by our website editor to update the page.

ENGAGING WITH FRANCOPHONE AFRICA ON CO-PACKAGING

Of the top 10 countries with the highest -burdens of diarrhoea, five are Francophone: Cameroon (8th), Chad (5th), DRC (7th), Madagascar (9th) and Niger (6th). However, engagement with ORSZCA from these countries is very low. As part of a strategy to improve this we have now launched a French version of the ORSZCA website. We have also split our mailing list and in future we will be issuing different versions of this ORSZCA UPDATE for English and French speaking members. If you would like to receive the French version of the ORSZCA UPDATE in future please email simon.berry@orszco-pack.org. If you have contacts in Francophone countries you might benefit from the ORSZCA UPDATE please direct them here: INSCRIVEZ-VOUS ICI

Thank you.

Morseda and Samy
ORSZCA Co-chairs

Dr Morseda Chowdhury
Director of Health, Nutrition and Population Programme
BRAC, Bangladesh

Samy Ahmar
Head of Health
Save the Children, UK

ENABLERS & BARRIERS TO ORS/ZINC COVERAGE – RESOURCES AVAILABLE

Welcome to the August ORSZCA UPDATE

As announced in our June update, on 15-Jul-22, thirty two experts gathered to share their views on the Enablers & Barriers to increased ORS and Zinc coverage. These included two co-pack manufacturers (Nigeria and Zambia), those with experience delivering ORS/Zinc programmes and academics who had evaluated such activities. These Enablers & Barriers were captured in our Enablers & Barriers table which is still open for additional views and comments here. The columns in this table are based on the framework suggested in the review: Progress over a Decade of Zinc and ORS Scale-up (Feb-2016) – Diarrhoea & Pneumonia Working Group.

We also recorded the key contributions made during the event here. This document is also open for comments.

We will now be encouraging follow-up conversations to dig deeper into some of the key issues.

A resource offered by USAID during the roundtable was the slidedeck from the Dec-2020 USAID Partners meeting: Building on over a decade of progress in ORS/Zinc. This can be downloaded from the ORSZCA website here.

THINGS TO LOOK OUT FOR

We continue to update and share our resource on the ORS and Zinc status around the world – orszco-pack.org/orsz-status – you can help by adding to the resource either by commenting on the ORSZCA website or by completing a questionnaire in English or French.

Thank you.

Dr Morseda Chowdhury and Samy Ahmar
ORSZCA Co-chairs
BRAC, Bangladesh and Save the Children, UK 

Welcome to the June ORSZCA UPDATE with opportunities to contribute and help.

ROUNDTABLE ON ENABLERS & BARRIERS TO ORS/ZINC COVERAGE – CAN YOU CONTRIBUTE?
We are organising an invitation-only roundtable to improve our understanding of the enablers and barriers to increasing ORS/Zinc coverage particularly in the top 10 high burden countries. We have invited all the people we know with experience implementing or evaluating ORS/Zinc programmes to participate. If you’ve not received an invitation and are able to participate, please email simon.berry@orszco-pack.org for an invitation. The key output will be the completion of this table of enablers and barriers.
The 90-minute roundtable will take place on 15 July 2022 from 10:00am to 11:30am (EST).

ORS/ZINC STATUS AROUND THE WORLD – EXTRA HELP NEEDED
Thanks to all those who responded to our Call to Action in the last ORSZCA UPDATE and completed our an online questionnaire (en Français) to gather information on the ORS/Zinc status around the world. We now have a unique public resource developing here: ORS/Zinc status from around the world. However, we do need a bit more help to obtain questionnaires from Cameroon, Chad, Madagascar and Niger. If you are from one of these countries, or have appropriate contacts, please complete a questionnaire on the link above. The questionnaire will take less than 10 minutes to complete and is designed to quickly collect the information you have at your fingertips.

THINGS TO LOOK OUT FOR
We will be sharing the outcome of the above enablers and barriers to ORS/Zinc coverage roundtable before the end of July for you to use to help support child health strategy development (local and international), funding bids, research plans, local proposals for action and so on.
We are also sharing back information harvested for the ORS/Zinc status questionnaires as they come in here: orszco-pack.org/orsz-status. 

Thanks again for your support.

Dr Morseda Chowdhury and Samy Ahmar
ORSZCA Co-chairs
BRAC, Bangladesh and Save the Children, UK

Faites défiler vers le bas pour lire et remplir le questionnaire en français

CALL TO ACTION

With the launch of ORSZCA complete, we have moved on to the ORSZCA work plan. In our discussions so far with UNICEF, would-be donors and partners, the most frequently asked question, that no one can answer, is “What is the current status of ORS and Zinc across LMICs?”:

• Where does Zinc have “over the counter” status?
• Which countries are using ORS/Zinc co-packs?
• Which countries have co-packaged ORS/Zinc on their Essential Medicines List?
• Co-pack pricing, availability, and so on

Working together, we, the ORSZCA Network, can bring this information together for everyone to see and enable strategic planning to help ensure that the new WHO co-packaging recommendation is implemented on the front line, and save hundreds of thousands of lives.

To enable this, we have developed and piloted an online questionnaire (in French and English) to gather this information from each country. It takes less than 10 minutes to complete. You do not have to know the answer to every question; our aim is to quickly gather insights from the information you have at your fingertips. We hope to receive multiple questionnaires from each country.

Please click on the link below to submit the information for your country:

• • In English
  • In French

The information contained in submitted questionnaires will be anonymised and published as country summaries on the ORSZCA website here: orszco-pack.org/orsz-status

ORSZCA LAUNCH
The launch on 19-Jan-22 was a great success and once again we wish to thank the Child Health Task Force for hosting the event. More than 200 people registered for the event and around 75 people attended. All 200 registrants were sent a link to a recording of the launch. The launch was rich in content with six international speakers and panellists. This content has been curated here: orszco-pack.org/launch – with key points and transcripts in both French and English.

We look forward to receiving your questionnaires and sharing the information back to you.

Dr Morseda Chowdhury and Samy Ahmar
ORSZCA Co-chairs
BRAC, Bangladesh and Save the Children, UK

Launch of the ORS/Zinc Co-pack Alliance (ORSZCA)

Date: Wednesday, 19 January, 2022
Time: 9am – 10:30am EST [GMT-5]
Zoom: Register here

Photo credit: Kate Holt/MCSP, Nondwe Iganga, Uganda

Please register to join a webinar to launch the ORS/Zinc Co-pack Alliance. We are grateful to the Child Health Task Force for hosting our launch. ORSZCA brings together organisations and individuals to identify and remove barriers to co-packaging to accelerate uptake and save lives. The Child Health Task Force will collaborate closely with ORSZCA towards the common goal of strengthened equitable and comprehensive child health programs. Join the event to hear from a distinguished panel of experts on this topic, meet the ORSZCA leadership, and become a part of this global collaborative effort.
Register here.

Speakers & Panelists

Dr. Alison Morgan Senior Health Specialist MNCH Global Financing Facility	Audrey Battu Director Essential Medicines Clinton Health Access Initiative	Malia Boggs Senior Technical Advisor Child Health USAID
Dr. Om Prakash Singh Head of Health and Nutrition Save the Children India	Dr. Robert Black Professor Global Disease Epidemiology and Control, Johns Hopkins University	Dr. Tahmeed Ahmed Executive Director, icddr,b

Moderators

• • Dr. Morseda Chowdhury, Director, Health, Nutrition and Population Programme, BRAC Bangladesh, ORSZCA Co-chair
  • Samy Ahmar, Head of Health, Save the Children UK, ORSZCA Co-chair
  • Dyness Kasungami, Director, Child Health Task Force, Senior Child Health Advisor, JSI Research & Training
  • Simon Berry, ORSZCA Start-up Catalyst, ColaLife

Please register using the link below in order to access the meeting connection information and add the webinar to your personal calendar.

REGISTER HERE

Welcome to the latest *pre-launch* ORSZCA Update.

We have two big announcements and one call to action.

1. ORSZCA Co-chairs confirmed
We are pleased to announce the ORSZCA Co-chairs. They are Dr Morseda Chowdhury, Director, Health, Nutrition and Population Programme, BRAC, Bangladesh and Samy Ahmar MSc, Head of Health, Save the Children, UK.

Dr Morseda Chowdhury, BRAC, Bangladesh
As Director of HNPP in BRAC, Dr. Morseda Chowdhury heads the largest non-governmental healthcare network in the world with ~50,000 community health workers (CHWs) serving a 110m population in Bangladesh. Currently, the program reaches around 10m people through CHWs with Essential Health Services (EHS) and Reproductive Healthcare which includes Orsaline and zinc packages for mothers, children and adolescent girls.
With nearly 20 years of work experience and PhD from Sydney School of Public Health, Dr. Morseda brings decades of experience in Public Health from practical project management to strategic research. Her specialty lies in reproductive healthcare, nutrition, communicable and non-communicable diseases through community-based healthcare at national scale.
As ORSCZA co-chair, she brings the insight of practical ground-level realities of a nation-wide program combined with academic research for advocacy with the Government.
LinkedIn

Samy Ahmar, Save the Children, UK
Samy Ahmar is Head of Health at Save the Children UK, where he and his team oversee a global portfolio of maternal, newborn, and child health projects in 20 countries with a focus sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Samy has 14 years of experience in international development, global health and evidence-based programming. Recent work includes diarrhoea-control in India and Nigeria, adaptive MNCH programming in rural DRC, the development of evidence-based strategies for pneumonia control in nine countries and the development of global health partnerships with a private sector organisations. Samy’s blog page is here.
LinkedIn

Leadership like this will ensure that co-packaged ORS and Zinc gets the attention it needs to trigger the step-change in the coverage of ORS and Zinc we are seeking.

2. ORSZCA launch date set
Our Co-chairs will introduce themselves at the ORSZCA Launch webinar which has been set for 19-Jan-22 at 9am EST. Please hold the date – add the event to your calendar using the links below. We thank the Child Health Task Force for their offer to host the launch and a formal invitation will be sent in due course with the details of the interactive agenda and speakers.

Add the ORSZCA Launch webinar to your calendar:
Apple | Google | Office365 | Outlook | Outlook.com | Yahoo

3. Call to action: A letter to UNICEF on Co-pack pricing – template provided
We are pleased to have started a positive dialogue with UNICEF Supply Division on their co-pack pricing but this has stalled, so we are asking ORSZCA members to consider writing to the Director of UNICEF’s Supply Division, Ms Etleva Kadilli, to ask for her support on this issue. To help with this we have provided a template letter here.

And finally, replies to this email are open, please get back to us with your comments.

Regards

Simon and Leith

Simon Berry and Leith Greenslade
ORSZCA Start-up catalysts