Saving lives in Nepal

11 March 2010

UKaid will help save the lives of more than 45,000 people, including many mothers and their babies, by supporting Nepal’s health services for the next five years.

Over the next five years the Nepal Health Sector Programme will focus on delivery of the MDGs – not only child and maternal health but also providing better nutrition and combating HIV/ AIDS.

Practical steps taken to save the lives of women and children over the next five years will include:

• Midwives assisting at 1.5 million births, up from 246,000 a year in 2009 to 406,000 a year in 2015;
• 220,000 women will receive emergency obstetrics care, and vital medical help to deal with birth complications, up from 33,000 a year in 2009 to 50,000 a year in 2015;
• 150,000 more women able to have Caesarean sections over five years.

UKaid’s £55 million in funding will represent 6% of the government of Nepal’s health reform budget of over £900 million to 2015.

International Development Minister Mike Foster said:

“Nepal has made some remarkable achievements in health, including halving child deaths and maternal mortality. This new funding will help build on these successes, and meet the commitments made by the Prime Minister at the UN General Assembly in September last year.

“Nepal is still the poorest country in Asia. That is why funding health is central to our goal of achieving the Millennium Development Goals in Nepal.” 

Mike Foster has also announced that Nepal will be one of the six countries focussed on by the DFID Nutrition Strategy.

The strategy in Nepal will see a range of measures from health, to agriculture, welfare and the empowerment of women to address the underlying causes of malnutrition.

Despite a decade of conflict between government and Maoists, which ended in November 2006, Nepal has made significant strides in health: deaths of young children have been halved over the past 15 years, getting Nepal on track to reduce death rates by two thirds by 2015 (Millennium Development Goal – MDG 4).

Maternal mortality has also been halved over the past decade, and the Government of Nepal has declared the goal to reduce them by three quarters by 2015 (MDG 5) as achievable.