Development Projects
Basic Services (including education and economic growth)
Humanitarian Assistance
Tuberculosis Control and Polio Eradication Programme *Current phase: 2007-2011
Project budget: $17.3 million
Project description:Canada has contributed funding to the World Health Organization to support the following programs in Afghanistan:
- The Polio Eradication Initiative ($9.5 million provided between October 2007 and September 2009).
- The National Tuberculosis Control Programme ($7.8 million provided between March 2008 and December 2011).
The polio eradication component of this project ended in 2009. Canada has provided additional funding through its Polio Eradication Signature Project. Polio vaccinations are targeted toward more than seven million children younger than the age of five, 1.25 million of whom live in the Southern provinces.
The National Tuberculosis Control Programme (NTCP) is an ongoing project that focuses on improving the abilities of the Afghan Ministry of Public Health’s staff to provide services to treat the disease.
CIDA funding will support the WHO to:
- Provide training and technical assistance to Ministry of Public Health staff.
- Create a system to select, use and distribute drugs in the treatment of tuberculosis.
- Track the spread of the disease.
- Actively monitoring Programme activities.
The NTCP also promotes continued dialogue and coordination between Afghanistan and Pakistan about tuberculosis control. In addition, it provides for the upgrading and equipping of border health facilities.
Both the Polio Eradication Initiative and the National Tuberculosis Control Programme are national in scope. However, they have a special focus on Afghanistan's Southern region, including Kandahar province.
Progress to date:
The vaccinators stop each child under the age of 5 and look for markings on the finger to indicate recent vaccination. If there is no mark, the child is immediately vaccinated. With teams on both sides of the border, each child is checked at least twice – at arrival and departure, regardless of where the journey started.
© WHO/Chris Black
Children who may not have been at home when the vaccination teams visited can be vaccinated in transit – at bus and railway stations or in other public places. This family was en route to Haripur in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province.
© WHO/Chris Black
Vaccination teams also visit nurseries, day-care centres and kindergarten classes to cover children who are not at home during the day. A vaccinator marks a child's finger at the Gandahar Central School in Peshawar, Pakistan.
© WHO/Chris Black
Some significant project results to-date are:
- Five thousand health workers trained in tuberculosis care, 750 of them community health workers.
- Eight main provinces of Afghanistan’s implementation of collaborative tuberculosis and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) activities to help reduce the incidence of tuberculosis.
- Strengthening of advocacy efforts and partnerships between the Ministry of Women Affairs, Ministry of Education and Ministry of Public Health.
- 300 members of women shuras trained across 8 provinces (Laghman, Jalalabad, Kandahar, Kunduz, Hirat, Bamian, Balkh and Takhar) on TB detection and referral.
