**_Family_** _Planning Success in Two Cities in Zaire_

_22_ with their counterparts in other regions and gave a much broader view of family planning than did the PRODEF training.

# _6. Other Aspects Contributing to_ **_Matadi_** _Success_

From its start, PRODEF enjoyed the support of a local radio programmer/announcer, who was later hired as a consultant specifically to promote family planning via the mass media and who was eventually chosen by the PSND to be its first regional coordinator in Bas Zaire. The project did not have a regular radio program, but this individual kept family planning in the public eye both through radio and in person. By 1989, 81 percent of the women of reproductive age had heard something on the radio regarding family planning, compared to 49 percent in 1981. While it is impossible to quantify the impact of this programming on the demand for family planning services, it almost certainly contributed to the acceptance of modern contraceptives.

One of the most common problems in health programs in Zaire is a lack of material resources. When salaries are late or do not arrive, or when carefully-planned activities are canceled at the last minute for lack of transportation or adequate financing, this has a marked impact on the motivation of the personnel involved. Because PRODEF was a pilot project which received adequate funding to cover all planned activities, the morale of the Zairian personnel remained high.

One vital resource to family planning programs is an uninterrupted stock of all contraceptives. This proved difficult to assure in the national program as a whole, for the reasons outlined in the early section of this paper on administrative and logistic problems. In addition, in late 1987 there was a period in which pills and condoms were not available even in the central warehouse in Kinshasa, much less at the field level. In short, stockouts are not uncommon in FP service outlets around the country.

Matadi was better able to avoid stockouts than other locations for several reasons. First, communication with Kinshasa supplies was easier from Matadi than from other cities in the country. Second, the PRODEF project had its own vehicle which it could use to transport the products by road, thus circumventing the delays related to using an air freight company. Third, the PRODEF project sold a larger volume of contraceptives and could provide service statistics to support their requests for resupplies, factors which gave them somewhat of a "preferred client status" when supplies became low in the central warehouse.

Finally, it should be mentioned that the PRODEF activities were initiated as an operations research project. This had three salutatory effects on program implementation. First, it provided a vehicle for experimenting with CBD, a potentially controversial approach to FP service delivery. As has been noted elsewhere [171 operations research allows administrators to test out new strategies on a small scale in the name of "research." If they prove untenable, the failure is simply considered the "result" in a research project which can then be terminated. More often, the results are positive and provide the administrator with concrete findings which can be used to justify program continuation and/or expansion. Second, the results of Phase I of PRODEF provided useful orientation for the continuation of project activity in Phase II (replacing the salaried home visitors with house-depot distributors). And third, as mentioned above, because this was an operations research project, the directors and staff were very aware that the results would be closely monitored and worked to assure that they would be as favorable as possible.

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