Ending the unmet need for Family Planning, ending preventable maternal deaths and ending Gender-Based Violence, the three ambitious and transformative results that the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) works to achieve, although may seem difficult, are possible, if we strategically position our investments and efforts in young people, women and adolescents. This is what guides our work in The Gambia.

UNFPA support to The Gambia, dates back to 1972. Since then, support from UNFPA to the country has been through successive Country Programmes (CP), the current programme being the eighth.

The Country Programme has been designed to support national efforts to harness the Demographic Dividend (DD) of a youthful population, through high impact investments in sexual and reproductive health and the elimination of gender-based violence, which hinder the potential of adolescents and youth, especially girls, to effectively contribute to poverty reduction and national development in general.

Guided by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), our Country Programme aims to target highly vulnerable women and youth in selected regions of the country. In the interest of maximal programme impact, it has been decided to concentrate programme effort at two outcome areas, namely Sexual and reproductive health and Adolescents and Youth.

As a result, this annual report, will take you through our 2018 journey, highlighting significant achievements recorded, in our efforts to realise the agency’s transformative results.

In 2018, the Country Office invested in the expansion of the Community-Based Distribution Programme, reaching an additional twenty (20) hard-to-reach communities, with Family Planning (FP) information and services.

Since the provision of Basic Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care (BEmONC) is a primary health care initiative strategy used to reduce maternal and newborn mortality, the agency supported the upgrading of seven (7) health facilities into BEmONC delivery centers and trained fifty (50) midwives from selected health facilities on how to perform the seven signal functions for a BEmONC facility.

Additionally, during the course of the year, Fifteen Thousand, Two Hundred and Twenty-Three (15,223) young people were reached with information on Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health (ASRH), while Ten Thousand, Four Hundred and Sixty-One (10,461) youth in schools, were reached with information on the benefits of family planning.

Furthermore, through our programming, we supported 10 Maternal Death Audit Reviews (MDAR) in hospitals and major health centers across the country and also supported 19 Obstetric Fistula repair surgeries, a move geared towards giving women living with this condition, a chance to restore their dignity and hope for survival.

While major results were recorded in 2018, we look forward to continue delivering for The Gambia in 2019 and beyond, results for the benefit of key populations – women, youth and adolescents, accompanied by our partners and the communities we serve.