New Award Will Improve Health and Nutrition in Tajikistan

Through a new $13 million award from the US Agency for International Development, IntraHealth International will improve health and nutrition in Tajikistan, particularly for women and children in the Khatlon oblast, an administrative region.The five-year project—Feed the Future Tajikistan Health and Nutrition Program—led by IntraHealth will integrate high-quality maternal, newborn, and child health care at the family, community, clinical, and national levels, with an emphasis on nutrition, sanitation, and hygiene. IntraHealth’s partners include Abt Associates and Mercy Corps. This project seeks to synergize and strengthen outcomes of the Scaling Up Nutrition movement (a collective country-led effort to improve nutrition), sustainable agriculture, and household food security.Tajikistan is the poorest of the five Central Asian republics. Almost half the population is living below the national poverty line and one-third is affected by food insecurity. The remote Khatlon oblast is the most populous and has some of the country’s poorest nutrition and maternal and child health statistics in tandem with a suboptimal agriculture sector. The region has the highest under-five mortality rate in the country (61 per 1,000 live births), twice as high as in the capital, Dushanbe. Twenty-seven percent of children in the region are stunted.  With increased economic growth in recent years, the Government of Tajikistan has resourced poverty reduction efforts th...
Source: IntraHealth International - Category: Global & Universal Source Type: news