The ROC government-funded International Cooperation and Development Fund said Sept. 20 that it will launch a cooperative program with The Gambia to improve health care for pregnant women in the West African nation.
According to the TaiwanICDF, more than 6,000 Gambian women per year experience difficulties during pregnancy and birth. Roughly 60 percent of these cases occur in the country’s interior Upper River Region, which suffers from poor basic infrastructure and insufficient health care personnel.
The five-year program, which will focus on this region, will include professional health care training for midwives, steps to increase the number of women covered by regular house calls, as well as the provision of medical supplies, equipment and facilities to improve the quality of service for pregnant women and reduce the newborn mortality rate.
The TaiwanICDF said the program, whose mission of improving pregnancy health care is in line with United Nations Millennium Development Goals, will be launched at the end of this month when the organization sends related personnel to The Gambia to begin work. (SB-THN)