Connecting Care: Eliminating Service Siloes Through Integrated Reproductive Health and GBV Programming in Tenenkou, Mali

In Tenenkou, a district in Mali’s Mopti region, armed groups have ordered schools closed in nearly all villages during more than a decade of conflict, irregular checkpoints control movement and a fuel crisis limits it further. In most humanitarian settings, reproductive health care and services for survivors of gender-based violence (GBV) run on separate systems, so a woman who needs both is sent from place to place, and each extra step makes it likelier she goes without. The Mopti region recorded 747 GBV incidents in 2025.

Under the IRC’s PRET-SRHR project (Partnering for Resilience to Emergencies through Transformation of Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights), seven health facilities now offer free care, and trained staff identify GBV risk during routine visits, give first-line support and refer survivors, so a woman doesn’t need to present as one to get care. In communities, focal points, dialogues, the Girl Shine program for adolescent girls and a program for men work to shift the norms that silence survivors.

In its first two years, the project recorded 7,329 assisted deliveries and 12,742 women attending a first antenatal visit, and health centers managed 16 cases of rape, 12 within the critical 72-hour window. The report calls the model a replicable framework for conflict-affected areas of Mali and the Sahel, and Mali’s National Office of Reproductive Health has developed integration registers for all health facilities. Sustaining it depends on reliable family planning supplies and, security permitting, continued supervision of trained community actors.

Based on reporting by RELIEFWEB