Telling Our Story

The State Registration Service of the Kyrgyz Republic has reduced the list of documents required for a national passport, marking an important milestone USAID’s efforts to simplify the issuance of passports in Kyrgyzstan.

The previous law prescribed a complex, expensive, and time-consuming process for acquiring a Kyrgyz passport.  Kyrgyz citizens spent a significant amount of time gathering up to 13 mandatory supporting documents and then waited in slow moving lines to apply for and receive passports.

The USAID Quality Health Care Project and the Government of Kyrgyzstan are working together to implement and institutionalize the World Health Organization’s Effective Perinatal Care program in maternity hospitals across the country. Through training work-shops and supportive mentoring, USAID is teaching health care providers how to provide postpartum counseling to new mothers and their families to prevent serious health problems among new-borns.

Dr. Halima Subankulova (far right) explains to her patient that par-ents can help protect new babies from many health risks.

On June 30, 2011 for the first time since the break-up of the Soviet Union, a plane landed at Issyk-Kul International Airport, carrying 50 tourists from Almaty, Kazakhstan. Visitors from Kazakhstan make up 70 percent of the tourists who come to Kyrgyzstan – nearly 1.4 million Kazakhs visited the country in 2009. Most of them come to the beautiful lake, which is renowned for its healing qualities. Thanks to USAID’s Local Development Program, getting from Kazakhstan to Issyk Kul’s vacation resorts is easier than ever – travel time has been reduced from an 8-hour drive to a 45-minute flight.

The Kyrgyz Government has increased its education budget annually since 2002. Despite these efforts, the increase is not enough to finance initiatives to improve the quality of education. This is in part because the increases are not used effectively and transparently. To solve this problem, the Ministry of Education and Science is reforming  the school financial and management systems  from the national to the commuty level.