“As health care workers, we know our communities best and can help save lives when we have the best training and information.” — Gulsunmoh Abdulloeva

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.

​​​For countries wanting to strengthen health budget execution, learning about promising approaches used by others is one thing but putting them into practice is another. This blog reveals how two countries, Lao PDR and Peru, adapted promising practices and began to implement them.

What do Lao PDR, Malaysia, and Kenya have in common? All three countries have strengthened their budget structures and processes to enable good health budget execution. Their experiences hold valuable lessons for others striving to increase budget execution and unlock significant resources for health.

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. 

At the request of the Laos Ministry of Health, LHSS helped mobilize volunteer medical students to support a national hotline for COVID-19.  At the peak of the Pai Mai holiday, the hotline fielded 5,000 calls a day.

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. 

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.