For reference: What size for Women's Groups in Rural Tanzania?

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This is a technical note for those who might be planning on setting up women's groups in rural Tanzania, with a view to trying to reduce the dreadful maternal and neonatal mortality rates.

One of the early planning questions is exactly what size of territory a women's group should represent; what that means for the number of 'Community Facilitators', (CF); and the implications for the demographics within that small population.

Here then is some useful info based on published data, for those doing any such planning:

Tanzania has an official village and hamlet structure. 

A 'hamlet' is 100 households. A 'village' is 3-4 hamlets. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_Tanzania)

This is what a hamlet looks like in rural Morogoro region: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDGP2GJRWuA. 

If one women's group should could cover (say) 700 population, then in rural Tanzania this would mean:

• one hamlet per women's group may be just about perfect: it contains around 700 people, (if 7 people per household);
• this covers about 6 x 4km of territory, (pop density 31/sq km); 
• each hamlet of 700 people might have 28 births/year, (Crude birth rate 39); 
• (of which mothers at least a third should be in the group); 
• there may be 175 women of reproductive age, (WRA 47%); 
• the healthy of whom would go on to have more than six children, (fertility rate 6.3)
• With a MMR of 454 in Tanzania as a whole, and ??750 in rural areas, there would be one maternal death every 5 years for each hamlet /women's group;
• Infant MR of 51, and under-5 MR of 81 in the country as a whole, are serious under-estimates in rural areas, so of the 28 births, perhaps 2 neonates and one further under-5 will die each year per hamlet.  (see: http://www.nbs.go.tz/nbs/takwimu/references/Tanzania_in_figures2012.pdf)

With one Community Facilitator of Women's Groups covering two villages, ( = 8 hamlets & 8 Women's Groups), this would be a population of around 5,000. 

That would mean that each CF would start off with one maternal death and 20+ baby/child deaths per year on her patch - huge scope for any intervention to show benefit.