The revitalized Green Star family planning campaign launched in October during Tanzania’s National Family Planning Conference in Dar es Salaam.
Vice President of Tanzania Dr. Mohammed Gharib Bilal unveiled the campaign saying, “I believe that this campaign will accelerate efforts to accessing correct information on family planning and services, hence contribute to family planning uptake.”
The campaign slogan, “Follow the Green Star”, encourages Tanzanians to seek out family planning information, services and supplies wherever they see the Green Star logo.
Closely-spaced pregnancies expose mothers and their babies to high risk complications and death. A two-year interval between the time a woman gives birth and tries to become pregnant again gives a mother time to regain strength and the child a healthy start before the next baby arrives, thereby improving health outcomes for both women and children. The campaign emphasizes the importance of healthy timing and spacing of pregnancy, and disseminates information about the range of family planning methods that are available.
“Green Star” will be rolled out on radio, through electronic and print media, and in health facilities. The campaign refers users to the mobile for reproductive health (m4RH) SMS platform for more information. By texting the word, “m4rh” to a number specific to the campaign, users can get more information about family planning methods and service delivery locations free of charge.
This campaign is part of the Government of Tanzania’s increased focus on family planning. It also is a part of the government’s efforts to fulfill one of the six commitments that President Kikwete made at the London Summit on Family Planning in July 2012 which ushered in the FP2020 campaign.
The Green Star campaign was born in 1993 when the Tanzanian Government began using a Green Star logo to brand family planning centers.
Led by the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, the Green Star campaign is a part of the Tanzania Communication Capacity Project (TCCP) and is made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) with technical assistance from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Communication Programs (JHU∙CCP).