Naxcivan City, Naxcivan … [ANN] Health care services in the Naxcivan Autonomous Republic (NAR), the mountainous enclave of Azerbaijan, are being aided by the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA). The most recent addition to the project is the opening this month of the only blood-testing laboratory in NAR. Two new rural clinics commenced operation in January, making a total of 46 health posts.
Funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the project was established by ADRA Azerbaijan a year ago to assist one of the world’s most remote and inaccessible regions. Now providing approximately 13,000 consultations each month, the clinicians celebrated their 100,000th consultation on January 4.
“Although the ADRA health care project is targeted at one-third of the population, mostly
war refugees, internally displaced people, and low-income families who arrived in this area around Mt. Ararat in 1994, the service brings many benefits to the entire population,” says Conrad Vine, ADRA manager of the NAR health project.
Three additional pediatricians have been added to the health staff so that each of the project’s three mobile health units carries two child specialists as well as a general practitioner and a nurse. This is necessary because ADRA is responsible for the immunization of all children in NAR through an additional child immunization program funded by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
ADRA’s recently established gynecological service provides both prenatal screening and postnatal care for mothers who represent almost half of the adult refugees and displaced persons in NAR.
“We have about 6,000 pregnant or lactating mothers coming to the health care project each month, so offering a gynecological component is a natural addition to the service,” says Vine.
Jeanne Russell, former deputy director and frequent advisor for Save the Children Fund, represented USAID in a February visit to the new ADRA program. She declared it to be “the best structured health program in the entire country due to the excellent mingling of health education, medical care and clinical expertise.” [Beth Schaefer]
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