Project HOPE Awarded $24M USAID Grant for Central Asian Republics Regional TB Program

Project HOPE, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of the world’s most vulnerable populations by improving the delivery of health care and building local capacity to sustain improvements, has been awarded a $24 million grant from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to combat tuberculosis (TB) in Central Asia.  The award will be used to ensure more effective and more accessible TB diagnoses and treatment for all in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, especially vulnerable persons, to reduce the burdens of TB and multi-drug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) in this region.

The program will be working towards the following seven objectives:

1. Facilitating more equitable access to comprehensive and appropriate TB diagnostic and treatment services for vulnerable populations;
2. Strengthening laboratory services to provide more timely, high-quality TB and MDR-TB diagnoses;
3. Ensuring the wide implementation of a patient-centered system for TB and MDR-TB across the region;
4. Enhancing an enabling environment for promoting TB services that meet international standards;
5. Strengthening human and institutional capacity of health systems to manage TB and MDR-TB services;
6. Improving coordination and linkage of TB with other health sectors and civil society organizations (CSOs); and,
7. Ensuring TB service providers and managers use electronic TB management information systems and use high-quality data for evidence-based decision making at all levels.

“Project HOPE is honored to receive this grant and take on a key role in building a system in Central Asia that improves TB diagnostic and treatment services for all and reduces the burden of TB and MDR-TB,” said Juliet MacDowell, Senior Director, Business Development at Project HOPE.

Project HOPE’s Regional Expertise in Tuberculosis

Project HOPE began addressing TB control in the Central Asian Republics (CAR) region through implementation of the directly observed treatment short-course (DOTS) strategy in Kazakhstan in 1993. Since then, HOPE has conducted tuberculosis programs in all five countries in the Central Asian Republics region: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.

Currently, Project HOPE is assisting national governments in integrating and strengthening health services in all five CAR countries under the five-year, USAID-funded Quality Health Care Program, which started in 2010.  As a principal recipient of grant funding from the GlobalFund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM), Project HOPE is strengthening the Tajikistan National TB Program to improve human resource capacity through training and increasing public awareness about the disease.  In Kyrgyzstan, HOPE is strengthening management systems and treatment of patients with drug-resistant TB, also with the help of funding from GFATM.

About Project HOPE

Founded in 1958, Project HOPE (Health Opportunities for People Everywhere) is dedicated to providing lasting solutions to health problems with the mission of helping people to help themselves. Identifiable to many by the SS HOPE, the world’s first peacetime hospital ship, Project HOPE now provides medical training and health education, as well as conducts humanitarian assistance programs in more than 30 countries. Follow us on Twitter at projecthopeorg.    www.projecthope.org