Capacity Building
Public health interventions achieve powerful
results when managed and sustained by people
from the communities they serve. However,
developing countries may lack sufficient
financial, operational and human resources to
support lasting programs.
WLF provides technical assistance and training to arm local health practitioners with the skills to create self-sufficient programs, including health system improvements and professional trainings. WLF promotes capacity building as a continuous process in all of the programs it supports.
Carl Mercer, WLF's Project Manager, blogs
about his work to improve maternal and child
health in Tanzania.
WLF provides technical assistance and training to arm local health practitioners with the skills to create self-sufficient programs, including health system improvements and professional trainings. WLF promotes capacity building as a continuous process in all of the programs it supports.
Capacity Buiding: Reports from the Field
Tanzania - Expanding Critical Health Services for Women and Children
WLF Capacity Building by Numbers
- Three new operating theaters, three maternity wards, and 26 staff houses built to provide infant and maternal health care in rural Tanzania.
- Nearly 200 nurses, clinicians and pharmacists trained in asthma diagnosis and treatment in Kenya.
- One state-of-the-art tuberculosis training facility opened in the Philippines.
- Five international tobacco control country offices established by the International Union against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, a WLF grantee—in Beijing, Mexico City, Moscow, Delhi, and Cairo.
Spotlight: Capacity Building
In 2007 WLF provided US$1 million to the Ndela Youth Development Center in Tanzania, where infant and maternal mortality rates rank among the world's highest. In the rural region of Kigoma, maternal and neonatal health care services are nearly impossible to access because of a severe shortage of skilled physicians, inadequate equipment and facilities, and poor roads. WLF's grant funded critical health care improvements, including staff training and housing, new operating rooms, and reliable supplies of electricity and clean water.As a result of this project, 1,500 fewer infants will die in the days immediately following birth, and 350 fewer women will die in childbirth each year, according to IFAKARA's estimates. Because of the first year's success, WLF gave another $3.4 million to the project in March 2008.
Dr. Michael Curci, retired after 30 years of
practice as a general and pediatric surgeon,
moved with his wife to Tanzania to help
establish these health services in rural
Kigoma, and started a new chapter in his life.
He spoke to WLF about his experience, and why
these services are so critically needed.