Approximately 60 representatives from implementing partners as well as UNFPA staff attended a two-day training session held in Yangon from 20-21 October 2014, to boost their existing planning, monitoring, measuring, evaluating and planning skills on joint programme activities on core issues such as sexual and reproductive health rights (SRHR), maternal health (MH), Adolescents, HIV/AIDS, Population, Gender and Humanitarian Assistance.

Daw Thazin Nwe President of MMCWA gave the opening remarks urging participants to actively participate in the conference.

Questions to youth migrants have been included by UNFPA as part of an in-depth review of its support to youth in rural areas of Myanmar. This year's theme of International Migrant's Day, "Saving Migrant's Lives", is highlighting the main challenge UNFPA is facing when developing a new strategy for its youth support in rural areas. It calls for more attention from all relevant stakeholders, as initial findings are alarming.

U Than Htay, a Health Assistant from Tatkone Township in Nay Pyi Taw Region, almost forgot about the intense heat outside as he focused on the lecture by Dr. Theingi Myint, the focal person for Maternal and Reproductive Health Unit of the Ministry of Health. She explained the importance of reproductive health and also the difference between maternal and child health and reproductive health - the latter covering the whole life span of men and women, from ‘womb’ to ‘tomb’ which is also known as the lifelong healthcare approach.

Dedayae, a township in the Ayeyarwady Region, was the first township in Myanmar to successfully pilot the use of mobile phones to collect data to increase the availability of reproductive health commodities. The evaluation of this pilot shows that mobile data entry has strengthened the supply chain system and significantly reduced stock outs. Compared to non-mobile facilities, fewer errors were made in data entry (0% vs. 6%), more transactions were made (32 vs. 10) and data was updated quicker (12 days vs. 36 days).

Since the end of April, and with one month to go before the main census data release, UNFPA has been advertising the availability of its census toolkit in newspapers, on selected TV channels, its country office website as well as on the radio. In ten days alone, 200 people working in their communities across the country have ordered a copy of the toolkit – which is free of charge.