Estimates from the United Nations Population Fund indicate that the costs of family planning (FP) and other reproductive health (RH) services are increasing and that it will be difficult for donors and countries to meet these costs. Many institutions delivering RH services operate significantly below their physical capacity to see clients, and much of the equipment required for expanding RH services may already be available for use. The marginal costs of adding infrastructure could be low. Many institutions have staff that are not fully occupied, and thus the staff necessary to expand RH services may also be in place. In this paper, we examine the cost implications for labor of expanding the provision of syndromic management services in FP clinics in Zimbabwe. Syndromic management of sexually transmitted infections allows health care workers to make a diagnosis without sophisticated laboratory tests because it is based on clinical syndromes and, in some cases, assessments of an individual patient’s risk for STI infection
