 In many indigenous communities around the world, the majority of births still take place inside the home with only the assistance of a traditional birth attendant. Due to a lack of access to health care services, many women with high-risk pregnancies never receive the medical attention they need and, often, they are faced with the misfortune of miscarriage and even death.
Project Concern International (PCI) is ensuring women in rural areas have access to lifesaving resources when dealing with high-risk pregnancies or complications during childbirth. In addition, PCI’s maternal and child health programs empower women to feed and care for themselves and their families by promoting healthy behaviors such as prenatal care, immunizations, and exclusive breastfeeding.
For many children, a life of poverty can also mean a life of malnutrition and illness. Every day, almost 30,000 children under the age of five will die from preventable or treatable diseases like malaria and diarrhea throughout the world. To address these issues, PCI provides many intervention program services including lifesaving immunizations; control and prevention of diarrheal disease; pneumonia case management; growth monitoring; and securing better nutrition through the provision of Vitamin A and school feeding programs.
These interventions are strategically coupled with training of Ministry of Health staff, community volunteers, and traditional birth attendants to respond to the community’s various maternal and child health needs, while also promoting sexual and reproductive health rights and family planning, and providing education on ways to prevent disease.
How Project Concern International is Making a Difference…
- In Huehuetenango, PCI/Guatemala’s women’s health center, Casa Materna, provided quality health services to approximately 9,000 women of reproductive age and trained a total of 12,517 women in health and nutrition topics with a special emphasis on children's growth.
- In Indonesia’s Pandeglang District, Project Concern International has decreased severe malnutrition in children by 25 percent and has reduced the prevalence of diarrhea in children under the age of two by two-thirds.
- Through instilling exclusive breastfeeding practices for infants age 0-5 months, PCI’s program in Nchelenge, Zambia reduced the number of young children who are underweight by half.
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