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known by its Spanish-language initials as AIN,
Juanita’s parents, Maria and Julio, are well aware
of the steps needed to keep their daughter on
the path to a healthy, productive life. When Juanita
was born, her parents registered her with the
community health center in Palos Blanco, their
village near La Paz, Honduras. Each month, Maria
and Julio take Juanita to the clinic where they
take part in weighing and measuring their daughter
and plotting the results on a growth chart. It
was this cornerstone procedure of the AIN program
that alerted the family to a diarrhea-induced
drop in Juanita’s weight during her first months
of life. Following AIN’s systematic plan of action,
Maria and Julio worked with the village health
monitor to provide the child with speedy, effective
care near her home. Soon, she was back on the
road to growth and health.
Parental
participation, community action and equal access
to care are essential parts of this USAID-supported
program reaching 5,000 Hondurans under the age
of two in some 150 communities. AIN’s approach
gives communities and families a link to outside
help through a health referral program, ensuring
proper treatment when the children become sick.
But it empowers them to be responsible for the
health of their children at the most basic, preventive
level. This is a power that is sorely needed in
a country where almost 40 percent of the population
under 5 years old suffers from malnutrition, and
the rate jumps to as high as 70 percent in the
nation’s poorest communities.
In
addition to impacting child survival, USAID-supported
programs are improving reproductive health and
family planning, increasing use of practices to
prevent sexually transmitted diseases, including
AIDS, improving household food security and improving
prevention and control of malaria, dengue and
tuberculosis. In 2001, a self-sustaining national
social marketing program for condoms was launched.
USAID grantees the Association of People Living
with AIDS and the Central American AIDS Action
Program successfully lobbied the Honduran Congress
to fund anti-retroviral drugs.
Fruits
of USAID’s fostering of family planning were seen
in the USAID-supported 2001 National Epidemiological
and Family Health Survey, which documented some
dramatic results since the 1996 survey. The proportion
of couples practicing modern family planning increased
10% over the past five years, from 40 percent
to 50 percent nationally. The impact of this change
is clear: the total fertility rate decreased over
10 percent, from 4.9 in 1996 to 4.4 in 2001.
In
2001, the P.L. 480 Title II program contributed
to a reduction in childhood malnutrition in extremely
poor municipalities in western Honduras through
a focus on the following key food security variables:
Increasing the availability of and access to food
through increased local production, the creation
of market infrastructure, road building and improvement,
and improved marketing, acquisition and provision
of food to vulnerable groups; Increasing the biological
utilization of food through improved maternal
child care and reproductive health practices and
improved access to and use of health services;
and improving the municipal and community capabilities
to manage food security interventions and resources.
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