MALAWI | Meet Elinat and her newborn at Kainja clinic in Malawi. USAID supports primary health care delivery in Malawi, at clinics like the one where Elinat takes her baby, by training health surveillance assistants, providing supplies, supporting District Health Management teams, and delivering logistical support to conduct outreach clinics in hard-to-reach areas.

SIERRA LEONE | Meet Rebecca, a nurse in Thompson Bay, Sierra Leone who had a vision for creating a space where mothers and newborns could get the care they needed. With USAID support, Rebecca’s dream became a reality. Follow the story of new mother, Fatima, as she seeks care for her newborn son at Rebecca’s clinic. In Sierra Leone, the MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership program supports maternal, newborn, and child health, and voluntary family planning and reproductive health initiatives.

KYRGYZ REPUBLIC | Explore Zhannat's journey learning about nutrition for her family. Since 2019, USAID has partnered with the Kyrgyz Republic at the national and local levels—including in village committees and health centers, just like the one in Zhannat's village of Bel-Terek—to improve nutrition for women and children.  USAID's investments seek to protect nutrition throughout the lifecycle to ensure that all women and children in the Kyrgyz Republic are well-nourished and able to live healthy and productive lives.

KENYA | Kenya is a priority country for USAID’s work to reduce preventable maternal and child deaths due to its high levels of maternal and child mortality and poor coverage of essential health services. Across the country, less than 20 percent of health facilities can provide basic, emergency obstetric and neonatal care. In Kenya, USAID supports the education of community health care workers to meet the needs of families, and increases access to care by supporting services where they are needed most. 

TANZANIA | Health workers in northern Tanzania are using a new phone call referral system to fast-track decision-making and decrease preventable deaths during childbirth. It was this system, developed by USAID in partnership with the Government of Tanzania, that saved the life of 36-year-old Dotto Wilson. The mother of six survived a life-threatening childbirth complication. Meet Dotto and explore how this partnership changed the landscape of childbirth in her community. 

INDIA | The USAID- and WorldFish-supported Scaling Nutrition Sensitive Fisheries Technologies Through Partnerships project promotes carp-mola fish cultivation in nearly 800 home ponds across Odisha state to improve rural families’ access to nutritious fish and enhance their livelihoods. The project also works with 22 women’s groups to teach them the nutritional value of small fish and cultivate nutritious fish in community-leased ponds.

NIGERIA | Faced with limited local record keeping and low levels of literacy and connectivity, an innovative program uses a combination of digital record keeping and community engagement to increase early childhood immunizations. An innovative USAID-supported project recruits local women for their team of trained volunteers and supports them with free mobile phones, empowering women to help their communities and overcome social barriers. Learn more about Fatima, a mother of four, and her experience with this program.

As India strives to reach the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, USAID’s new framework and partnerships will be vital for increasing routine immunization coverage across the country to increase maternal and child survival.

Learn how USAID’s partnership with the Government of India transformed labor and delivery rooms for safer childbirth. Thanks to the respectful care and delivery that Shivani, a new mother, received last month at the Ranchi District Hospital, in Jharkhand, India, she can now spend time recovering and enjoy thinking about name choices for her newborn with her husband, Amit. 

A mother in Senegal names her newborn after her midwife to honor the quality of care she received at community-invested health post. Read her story and learn how USAID is supporting women and children in Senegal to have sustainable access to high quality quality health services for improved health outcomes over the course of their lives.

Almost half of all deaths for children under 5 are attributable to malnutrition — this is why improving nutrition is imperative to achieving USAID’s global maternal and child survival goals. Climate change, conflict, and the lasting impacts of COVID-19 have all exacerbated rates of global malnutrition and contributed to the global food security and hunger crisis. Learn how health workers are leading the charge for change.

In Kenya, the maternal mortality rate is almost 2.5 times higher than the average maternal mortality rate worldwide. Gaps in the quality of intrapartum care and delays in care seeking contribute to a significant number of maternal deaths in Kenya. Learn how USAID is improving access to health services with digital technology for mothers in Kenya. 

Vaccines are powerful tools for saving lives, stopping the spread of infectious diseases, and helping communities thrive. When individuals are fully protected from the threat of vaccine-preventable diseases, they can stay in school, care for their families, and contribute to the economic growth of their countries. Yet, to ultimately support long lives well-lived, we must go from vaccines to vaccination.

From emperors in ancient Rome to toddlers in sub-Saharan Africa today, people have been dying from malaria for thousands of years. Over the last century, innovative technologies and scientific breakthroughs have supported more than 100 countries, including the United States, to successfully eliminate malaria from within their borders. Yet for more than half the world, malaria remains a leading cause of death and hospitalizations, particularly for young children and pregnant women.

Recognizing that achieving optimal breastfeeding practices requires broad-based support, USAID promotes breastfeeding as a collective responsibility — one that families, communities, health systems, governments, and development partners must champion together.

Around the world, many people who menstruate every month cannot afford to buy tampons and pads. This “period poverty” can cause poor concentration at work and even missed work, leading to less productivity.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, women — and mothers in particular — have borne the brunt of hardships brought about by lockdowns, economic crises, and disruptions to food systems. The pandemic has limited access to essential health care, cost countless women their jobs, and closed schools around the world. Many mothers were challenged to find emergency health services and child care, as well as the means to feed their families. Learn how USAID is advancing quality, respectful, and accessible care for mothers and their families.

Meet Tayeeba: a bright, smiling 8-year-old from Shadipur, Bangladesh. She spends her days playing with her family and neighbors, like many other children across the world. However, Tayeeba’s first moments of life were not so carefree. When her mom Rikta gave birth to her in 2012, attending midwife Sakhina quickly realized Tayeeba was not breathing. Learn how an innovative approach and a decade of partnership have helped save newborn lives.

Micronutrient deficiencies are the most widespread form of malnutrition, affecting hundreds of thousands of children each year, impairing their future and even their survival. Thirty years ago, global leaders made bold commitments to eliminate vitamin and mineral deficiencies.

USAID works to protect, prevent, and treat pneumonia using approaches that build up a child’s resilience to better fight off disease. These interventions include ensuring proper nutrition through breastfeeding and complementary feeding; expanding routine immunization; promoting handwashing with soap and water; improving indoor air quality through multi-sectoral efforts; scaling up quality of care; and using technological advances to diagnose pneumonia more accurately. 

Proper handwashing with soap and water represents the first layer of defense against COVID-19 and other infectious diseases. But many places around the world cannot practice this behavior due to a lack of access to safe water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) resources. Health care workers, families, and students cannot practice safe handwashing due to shortages of running water or soap in homes, health care facilities, and schools.

Thanks to 25 years of coordination and commitment to scaling up and sustaining the delivery of vaccines to children in the hardest-to-reach places, the wild poliovirus no longer threatens children across the African continent. Africa is the fifth of six global regions declared wild polio-free; only the eastern Mediterranean region remains uncertified. Learn about the history of this progress and how diverse teams worked together to stop the spread of polio on the African continent. 

To strangers, Isabella goes by Isabella Hwinzela Bigendako or Nurse Isabella. But to family, friends, and colleagues, she answers to a different name: ‘Mama Breastfeeding.’ Learn more about how Isabella earned this nickname after she participated in a USAID-supported mentorship training for community-level healthcare providers to learn best practices for maternal and child health, including building the skills of other health workers to provide proper breastfeeding counseling and support to pregnant women and new families.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, nurses and midwives played a critical role in the outbreak response in addition to maintaining essential health care for women and children. Nurses and midwives also play an invaluable role in saving maternal, newborn, and child lives. Learn more about the ways USAID investments empower nurses and midwives by providing them with the skills and support for success.

Every year, 19 million infants worldwide are not reached with basic vaccinations. Vaccines save lives. Immunization averts 2 to 3 million deaths annually, and is one of the most cost-effective interventions to stop the spread of preventable infectious diseases. Take a look back and learn from our 'Vaccine Champions' around the world.