Through intensive engagement with residents, health workers and other community leaders countered misinformation and eased people's concerns. The result: thousands more COVID-19 vaccinations.

LHSS is supporting local government institutions in Bangladesh’s densely populated Rajshahi and Sylhet Divisions to expand access to primary health services and reduce out-of-pocket expenditures for low-income urban residents. 

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 fact sheet provides a summary of activity progress in Central Asia as well as results and impact.

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. 

Accurate and timely identification of COVID-19 variants in circulation is critical to an effective COVID-19 response. Following the delivery of parts and equipment to refurbish the country’s only COVID-19 specific genomic sequencing machine, LHSS supported training for laboratory specialists on genomic sequencing of COVID-19 virus variants. 

Late last year, health sector practitioners from eight countries met to tackle the issue head-on as participants in the Joint Learning Network Health Budget Execution Learning Exchange. They made meaningful progress.

Five innovators—from Nigeria, Senegal, India, and Cameroon— are working with LHSS to sustainably scale up their businesses and reach more people with their vital health services.

In Tajikistan, LHSS addresses immediate epidemic prevention, detection, and response needs while building on the existing in-country national health system and health system resilience strategies. 

Poor budget execution results in inefficiencies that undermine the ability of health agencies to improve access to needed health services and improve population health. Yet billions of dollars in unexecuted health budgets are returned to treasuries every year. 

Early in the pandemic, there were no laboratories equipped for PCR testing in Khujand, Tajikistan’s second largest city. To address this challenge, LHSS teamed with USAID’s mission in Tajikistan and the country’s Ministry of Health to train laboratory specialists throughout the nation. 

The proliferation of mobile telephones and advances in digital financial technology have created opportunities for faster progress towards achieving Universal Health Coverage.

LHSS supports scale up and adaptation of existing vaccination programs for COVID-19 while also strengthening countries’ capacity to manage other public health efforts in the future.