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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contacts:
Schecter, Kate
Program Officer, Russia and the Caucasus
Washington kschecter@aiha.com

Avaliani, Nata
Regional Director
Tbilisi nata.avaliani@access.sanet.ge

 
USAID-funded partnership moves one step closer to opening model primary healthcare training center in Azerbaijan’s second-largest city

Baku, Azerbaijan, and Washington, DC, June 19, 2006—The American International Health Alliance (AIHA) is pleased to announce that members of its Ganja (Azerbaijan)/Livermore (California) partnership will conduct a training workshop June 19-30 for doctors and nurses from the Azerbaijani city of Ganja. Key topics addressed during this skills-building event will include community-based health promotion and disease prevention. Partners will also discuss plans for the upcoming opening of a model Primary Healthcare Training Center in Ganja, which is slated for September.

Part of a larger healthcare program in the Caucasus funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), AIHA’s Ganja/Livermore partnership links the Ganja City Health Administration with ValleyCare Health System and the Alameda County Public Health Department in California. This alliance was formed in April 2004 to improve community-based primary healthcare services in Ganja.

The current exchange visit is one in a series of capacity-building activities facilitated through the AIHA partnership and designed to develop the professional skills of local primary care practitioners. The Primary Healthcare Training Center will demonstrate the community-oriented primary healthcare model introduced by the partnership. The Center will focus on training—and in some instances re-training—physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals in the region to help ensure better public access to high-quality primary care services.

US specialists will work with the Ganja partners to develop and implement programs to raise awareness of key health issues among the local population. The visit will also focus on patient satisfaction and data collection issues, evidence-based clinical practice guidelines, and community participation in the decision-making processes related to healthcare issues. Important patient education and outreach activities—including screening for hypertension and cervical cancer, performing routine physical exams, and discussing a wide range of common health problems ranging from breast cancer to bronchial asthma—will also be conducted during the two-week exchange.

Created in 1992 by a consortium of major healthcare provider associations and professional medical education organizations, AIHA establishes and manages twinning partnerships between health-related institutions in the United States and their counterparts in Africa, Asia, Eurasia, and the Caribbean. Since its inception, AIHA has supported more than 125 partnerships linking dedicated volunteers in the United States with communities, institutions, and individual colleagues overseas in a concerted effort to improve health service delivery in countries with limited resources. Operating under various cooperative agreements and grants from US and international donor agencies including the United States Agency for International Development (USAID); the US Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA); the World Health Organization (WHO); the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; and the German Society for Technical Cooperation (GTZ), AIHA, its partnerships, and complementary programs represent one of the US healthcare sector’s most coordinated responses to global health issues.

Support for the HIV/AIDS Twinning Center is provided by HRSA, a leading provider of HIV/AIDS care and treatment services to underserved populations in resource-poor settings in the United States and, more recently, throughout the world.

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