With a grant from LHSS, the Jamaican health care firm Online Medics is supporting the government’s COVID-19 vaccination effort while gaining valuable new business capacities. “LHSS allowed me to think in the long term – where I wanted my company to go and what I need to do to get it there,” says owner Alex Tracey.

Excerpts from an interview with Mr. Marcelo Amaral, Director General of Corporate Service at the Ministry of Health in Timor-Leste.

One-page document outlining key findings and actionable insights related to health financing strategies from the USAID Health System Sustainability Activity in Timor-Leste.

USAID's Health System Sustainability Activity in Timor-Leste announced an additional funding of $600,000 to support the efforts of the Ministry of Health, Government of Timor-Leste, in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.

This brief highlights learnings from working with local government leaders of two city corporations and ten district-level municipalities from the Rajshahi and Sylhet divisions in Bangladesh.

In Bangladesh, LHSS has built relationships with ministries, departments, and development partners to support its objective of assisting urban primary health care delivery. This newsletter provides detailed information about the latest news, updates, and activities in Bangladesh.

This communications strategy outlines how the LHSS team will support the private sector providers in implementing their communication plans.

The LHSS Jamaica Grants Strategy guides implementation of the grants-under-contract component of the LHSS Jamaica activity, with the goal of increasing the capacity of local organizations to prepare, obtain, and manage successful health systems strengthening projects and activities.  

LHSS conducted this rapid assessment to better understand the current and potential role of the private health sector in Jamaica's COVID-19 response.

Since vaccines became available in 2021, only 26 percent of Jamaicans have been vaccinated – a far cry from the country’s goal of 65 percent by March 2022. Religious communities were among the victims of the misinformation causing vaccine hesitancy, with many of the country’s Christians believing the vaccines represented “the mark of the beast.” In response, the government called on church leaders to play a more prominent role in the country’s vaccination effort.

Both Ghana and Bangladesh have implemented health budget accountability mechanisms. Their experiences offer practical lessons that other countries can adapt to their own budget execution needs. 

The ‘COVID19 SAFE’ project opened with the launch of COVID-19 vaccination to school-age children (12–17 years old) in the Bobonaro municipality. The USAID Activity, working through HAMNASA, supported the Ministry of Health and Municipality Health Services in conducting community mobilization and disseminating COVID-19 information to the Memo village community, including to teachers and parents of school-age children.

U.S. Charge d’ Affaires Tom Daley and USAID Mission Director Zema Semunegus join the representative from local nongovernmental organizations and the Ministry of Health to launch the Heath Advocacy Network of Timor-Leste (REBAS- TL).

This brief shares insights from LHSS’s review of Timor-Leste’s thriving landscape of civil society organizations (CSOs), with a focus on those that are active in the health sector.