During September, IntraHealth received three separate multi-million-dollar awards to improve health in India, Tanzania and Southern Africa. The first, a $25 million grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), funds a program to improve maternal, neonatal and child health care in Northern India. IntraHealth has worked in India for more than ten years, leading and providing technical assistance to projects funded by USAID and the Gates Foundation.

Even as technology outsourcing to India from the U.S. booms, a huge gap remains between the two countries in maternal and child health. One woman dies every five minutes in India from complications related to childbirth and pregnancy; 50% of children in the country are undernourished and 25% of the world’s deaths among children occur in India. The five-year Vistaar Project will work in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand, home to approximately 10 million pregnant women and 14 million children under the age of five. In these states, maternal and child death rates are among the highest in the world.

"With the changes in the Indian economy and the good relations between our countries, the U.S. has an excellent opportunity to support India to substantially improve the well-being of its poorest women and children," says IntraHealth CEO Pape Gaye.

IntraHealth has also been awarded grants to work in Tanzania and Southern Africa. In Tanzania a $2.5 million project from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will expand routine counseling and testing for HIV. The project, funded through the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, will help bring HIV/AIDS services to nearly two million individuals over five years. IntraHealth is also working to strengthen human resources for health in Tanzania through the global Capacity Project.

Current efforts to improve HIV/AIDS programs and services in Lesotho and Swaziland will continue through a $5 million, two-year USAID-funded program that will also work in other countries in the Southern Africa region. Under this grant IntraHealth will mentor a network of regional organizations so that they are better able to strengthen the health workforce and health care systems in their own countries.