Jhpiego Receives $40 Million to Save the Lives of Women in Tanzania
30 September 2008
Baltimore, Maryland (24 September 2008)
— The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Tanzania
has awarded Jhpiego up to $40 million over five years to implement the Mothers and
Infants, Safe, Healthy, Alive (MAISHA) program. MAISHA is a consortium to improve
availability and quality of health care services in Tanzania for pregnant women and
their newborns with a focus on more rural and lower level facilities.
It is estimated that Tanzania has one of the highest maternal
mortality rates in the world with 578 women dying during delivery for every
100,000 women who give birth, and with annual mortality rates of 13,000 for
pregnant women and 45,000 for newborns. Jhpiego will collaborate with the
Tanzanian Ministry of Health and Social Welfare to strengthen high-quality
pre-natal care, basic emergency obstetric and newborn care, and community level
services to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS.
“Women don’t have to die in child birth.
” says Dr. Leslie Mancuso, president and CEO of Jhpiego
“For over 35 years, Jhpiego has been a leader in developing innovative
solutions to save the lives of women and children in many of the world’s
most vulnerable populations. We look forward to working with USAID and the
Tanzanian Ministry of Health and Social Welfare to reverse this trend and
to make motherhood safer for the women of Tanzania”
The project aims to:
- Reduce maternal mortality associated with major direct causes of mortality, including postpartum hemorrhage;
- Reduce newborn mortality due to infection;
- Reduce prevalence of low birth weight babies , stillbirths and newborn mortality due to malaria and congenital syphilis; and
- Reduce the number of transmissions of HIV infections from mother to child.
This project is part of USAID’s larger effort to improve the lives
of Tanzanians through better health with over $170 million in funding for 2008.
The MAISHA consortium, led by Jhpiego, consists of: Save the Children, Constella
Futures, and IMA World Health, along with a Tanzanian social marketing organization, T-MARC
About Jhpiego
For 35 years, Jhpiego, (pronounced "ja-pie-go"), has empowered front-line health
workers by designing and implementing simple, low-cost, hands-on solutions that
strengthen the delivery of health care services, following the
household-to-hospital continuum of care. We partner with community- to
national-level organizations to build sustainable, local capacity through
advocacy, policy and guidelines development, and quality and performance
improvement approaches.
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