Journal of Eurasian Studies

October-December 2012 JOURNAL OF EURASIAN STUDIES Volume IV., Issue 4.
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the end of 2007, all six Gorny-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast HPDUs had been handed over to district
health authorities as resource centres. 23
Aga Khan Health Services in Tajikistan provides technical assistance to the government and
reinforces community health / primary health care approaches. It was primarily active in the Gorny-
Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast and the Khotlon Oblast and established the essential pharmaceuticals
programme in 1997. Programmes like ‘The Family Medicine Programme’ and ‘Cross-Border Programme’
were launched to provide care to an additional 10% of the Gorny-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast and
to provide health care to Afghan Badakhshan people respectively. It has trained over 700 community
health promoters who are working in almost all villages of the Gorny-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast
and four districts of Khotlon. 24
Aga Khan Health Sservices is working with government and civil society organizations to continue to
support Community Health Promoters (CHPs) and facilitate the implementation of national reforms and
explore the development of private participation to address health care needs. It is also working to
promote the health status of the overall population in the country, with a focus on mothers and children
under the age of five. In driving towards this aim, Aga Khan Health Services places a special focus on
increasing the involvement of communities in addressing the health issues, like:
Training over 500 Community Health Promoters in the Gorny-Badakhshan Autonomous
Oblast and four districts of the Khotlon region to educate communities about essential health
issues and advocate on their behalf with local governments;
Developing a national nursing programme in partnership with World Health Organization;
Creating revolving funds with the aim of providing quality, affordable and accessible essential
services drugs in the Gorny-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast;
Rehabilitation of hospitals and extensive training of medical staff in the Gorny-Badakhshan
Autonomous Oblast. 25
Community Health Projects works to empower community members and community-based
organizations to address their own healthcare problems. It trains volunteer community health promoters
(CHP) to serve as a communication and advocacy link between communities and local government.
Since its inception, the project has trained over four hundred (CHP’s) in the Gorny-Badakhshan
Autonomous Oblast and one hundred in the Khotlon region of Tajikistan. The project has trained
members of primary health centers giving them training about safe motherhood, immunization,
nutrition, prevention of HIV and integrated management of childhood disease. The growth monitoring
and promotion component trains primar healt care staff and mothers in communites to monitor the
health and nutritional status of children under the age group of five. Since then, over eight thousand
children have been reached. 26
23 www.akdn.org.int/library/decuments/2008/icg-Taj-24.pdf, p. 9.
24 Aga Khan Development Network, http://www.untj.org/principals/minutes/AKDN, p. 3.
25 Arachu Castro, Merrill Singer. A Critical Anthropological Examination, USA, 2004, pp. 102-103.
26 Salman Kashavjee, Medicines and Transitions: The political economy of health and social change in post-Soviet Badakhshan,
Tajikistan, London, 1998, p. 1098.
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