The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded GBCHealth member Jhpiego a grant of nearly $3 million to expand access to contraceptive implants around the world over the next two years.

The project, “Accelerating Scale-up of Implants,” will enable Jhpiego to fast-track efforts to introduce and strengthen high-quality family planning services by building capacity, improving health providers’ skills with implants and helping selected countries to scale up implants more widely.

Jhpiego’s work is part of a larger effort led by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and partners to make implants more accessible to women by reducing the price so that it is affordable in low-resource countries. Under this initiative, GBCHealth member companies Bayer HealthCareAG and Merck will reduce the price of implantable contraceptive devices by half for the next six years in return for a commitment to assure funding for contraceptives over the next six years.

Jhpiego, an international health non-profit affiliated with Johns Hopkins University, will begin implementing the project in Kenya, Zambia and Nigeria and expects to develop a model for the scale up of implants that can be used in other countries.

Read Jhpiego press release