FutureGenerations

A new model of primary health care promoted by Future Generations is transforming 28 primary health care facilities into outreach centers to improve health in the poorest, remotest homes of Quechua-speaking communities of rural Cusco.

Although primary health facilities exist in these remote highlands, the indigenous communities do not utilize them due to distance and poverty combined with language and cultural barriers. As a result, the Cusco Region has among the highest rates of maternal-child mortality and chronic child malnutrition in Peru.

The Need: Death during childbirth is an every day occurrence in Afghanistan, which has among the highest rates of maternal and child mortality in the world. Many deaths can be prevented by changes in lifestyle and basic health care in the home. To change health behaviors and provide services at the village level, the Afghanistan Ministry of Health works to extend a Basic Package of Health Services (BPHS). One strategy is to train local people as Community Health Worker (CHWs).

The leaders of the work in Arunachal are local women known as Village Welfare Workers (VWWs) who help collect data, deliver home-based services and mobilize their community to implement positive change. Women are both the advocates and agents of change. As keepers of the home-fires, women are intensely motivated to help their families, and here, as elsewhere, are generally the first to embrace promising models of social change.

On the edge of the Amazon in the Huánuco Region are some of Peru’s poorest districts. The residents of Umari live on an average daily income of $6 USD a day. Families depend largely on potato farming, leaving children and mothers especially vulnerable to malnutrition and poor health.
But, communities like Umari have some successes and local resources from which to build a better future.