Population, Health and Nutrition
 Mothers and their children are given a health check by a community doctor at Sriramapura hospital in India. (Photo: John Isaac)
ASIA BUREAU HEALTH PROGRAMS
Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Cambodia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Tajikistan, Timor-Leste, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam
CONTACTS
Gary Cook
Senior Health Advisor
Tel: (202) 712-0707
Email: gcook@usaid.gov
Overview
About half of the world's maternal and child deaths take place in Asia. To help prevent these deaths, USAID provides essential training and health supplies and promotes best health practices, including family planning. Recognizing the threat posed by infectious disease in Asia, USAID strengthens the response of health systems and improves prevention, treatment, and support services to fight existing, new, and drug-resistant infectious diseases, as well as neglected tropical diseases.
Programs
Keeping Mothers and Their Children Healthy
Throughout Asia, poor women without access to health care are particularly vulnerable to pregnancy and childbirth complications. In addition, neonatal conditions such as low birth weight are responsible for about 40 percent of all deaths among children in Asia. In response, USAID promotes internationally recognized approaches to delivery, antenatal, postnatal, and neonatal care, as well as primary health services. In Tajikistan, a USAID Safe Motherhood initiative contributed to an increase in normal vaginal deliveries from 75 percent in 2007 to 89 percent in 2008. Using community outreach approaches and clinic care, USAID works to increase the percentage of skilled birth attendants at delivery, an intervention proven to save the lives of mothers and their babies. USAID also works to save children's lives by educating communities about hygiene and promoting immunization.
Saving Lives with Family Planning
With nearly half of Asia's population in the reproductive age group and lacking family planning services, expanding sustainable services is critical. USAID's investment in innovative family planning programs has led to sustainable partnerships that leverage resources and increase access. For example, a USAID-funded project in the Philippines successfully negotiated a 70 percent reduction in the price of oral contraceptives with a local pharmaceutical company. As a result, contraceptive sales increased by 350 percent between 2007 and 2008. More couples can now choose when to have a child, which increases the chances of survival for both mother and child.
Fighting Infectious Diseases
HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis (TB), avian influenza (AI), and polio continue to take an enormous human toll in Asia. An estimated 4.9 million people with HIV live in Asia, and, of the World Health Organization's 22 "high burden" countries for TB, half are in Asia. Most AI cases in poultry and humans have occurred in the region, which also has three of the world's four polio-endemic countries. The United States has made a five-year, $48 billion commitment to fight HIV/AIDS globally, and Vietnam is a priority country. In Cambodia, as a result of USAID support, the TB treatment success rate was over 90 percent in 2008. USAID has large AI programs in countries such as Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Vietnam, and supports programs to combat polio in India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.
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