Before the Ebola outbreak in 2014, state run health facilities in Guinea suffered from neglect. Particularly evident in poor, rural areas, this resulted in poor-quality services and treatment. Community members lacked faith in the public system. Those who were better-off resorted to using privately run clinics. When the epidemic occurred, the facilities were all but abandoned.
Saran Kanté lives in Kankan, rural Guinea. In March 2019, she was delighted to become the mother of a set of twins. But her joy was short-lived because the twins Fanta and Oumou were low weight babies; they weighed 1330g and 1380g respectively. The normal weight of a newborn should be above 2500g.
The agricultural sector remains the niche for creating employment and improving the living standards of the Guinean people. Transforming small-scale agriculture from subsistence to innovative, commercially oriented and modern agriculture will achieve the aim of offering multiple livelihoods and creating employment opportunities for many youth in search of their first employment in Guinea.
For the first time in fifteen years, Guinea now has a fully functional veterinary laboratory. On November 14, 2018, U.S. Ambassador Dennis Hankins and the Guinean Prime Minister Ibrahima Kassory Fofana officially inaugurated the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)-renovated Central Veterinary Diagnostics Laboratory (CVDL) in Conakry. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations renovated the CVDL under a public international organization grant from USAID’s Global Health Bureau. The veterinary laboratory’s improved diagnostics capacity for zoonotic diseases strengthens Guinea’s disease surveillance systems. USAID funded this project under the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA). GHSA has been active in Guinea since 2016 with USAID, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and U.S. Department of Defense as key partners to the Government of Guinea.
Mr. Jeff Bryan, a career Foreign Service Officer, was sworn in as the USAID Mission Director for Guinea and Sierra Leone on July 27, 2018. Prior to his assignment to Conakry, Mr. Bryan was the USAID Representative in Côte d'Ivoire from 2014 through 2018. Mr. Bryan also served in Moldova (2010-2014), the Democratic Republic of Congo (2005-2009), and Afghanistan (2004-2005). Prior to joining the Foreign Service, Mr. Bryan worked for the USAID Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (USAID/OFDA) from 2000 through 2003, focusing on disaster response for the southern Africa region. Before joining USAID, he was a delegate to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Gabon.
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Last updated: October 03, 2019
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