USAID Awards Fistula Care

USAID announces the award of Fistula Care, a $70 million, five-year Associate Cooperative Agreement to EngenderHealth and its partners that will build on the successes of the ACQUIRE Project.

Fistula Care will focus on:

• Strengthening the capacity of hospital centers to provide fistula repair
• Enhancing community and facility understanding and practices to prevent fistula
• Gathering, analyzing, reporting, and using data to strengthen the quality of fistula services
• Strengthening the supportive environment to institutionalize fistula prevention, repair, and reintegration programs

Fistula Care is an Associate Cooperative Agreement under the ACQUIRE Leader Award, which is managed and implemented by EngenderHealth in partnership with IntraHealth, CARE, Meridian Group International, the Adventist Development and Relief Agency International (ADRA), and the Society for Women and AIDS in Africa (SWAA). This group of partners brings expertise and experience in service delivery, competency-based training, communications, community mobilization, monitoring and evaluation, and research. The project will work in partnership with public sector, private sector, and nongovernmental and faith-based institutions, both national and international, to provide a full range of fistula care services.

Fistula Care is based in the Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Division of the Global Health Bureau’s Office of Health, Infectious Diseases and Nutrition (HIDN). In fiscal year 2008, fistula activities will transition from the ACQUIRE project to Fistula Care. As an Associate Cooperative Agreement mechanism, Fistula Care is available to Missions and can accept field support for technical assistance activities and program implementation in a full range of fistula prevention, repair, reintegration, and research activities. Fistula Care will assist USAID/Washington in monitoring fistula activities and reporting on this area of congressional interest.

The agreement will be implemented under the leadership of Ms. Karen Beattie, Project Director. Ms Beattie is a medical anthropologist and international reproductive health specialist with more than 20 years of experience as a program director, manager, innovator, and technical advisor. Dr. Joseph Ruminjo will serve as the Senior Clinical Advisor. Dr. Ruminjo is an obstetrician/gynecologist who brings 23 years of experience as a clinical professor and technical advisor in more than a dozen countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Ms. Evelyn Landry will serve as the Senior Monitoring, Evaluation and Research Advisor. Ms. Landry brings 25 years of experience as a senior manager and program evaluator with experience in 35 developing countries.

Within USAID, the project will be led by Mary Ellen Stanton as Cognizant Technical Officer and Trish MacDonald as Senior Technical Advisor. Please feel free to contact either of them if you have questions about Fistula Care or would like additional information.

Mary Ellen Stanton: 202-712-4208, mstanton@usaid.gov
Patricia MacDonald: 202-712-1235, pmacdonald@usaid.gov