USAID promotes relief to recovery

USAID is helping Liberia move from receiving relief to recovery, the agency said in its situation report. USAID said it was encouraging these efforts through programmes in agriculture, education and other community reintegration activities for the victims of war: child soldiers and disabled veterans. In the fiscal year for 1999, the agency gave US $10.77 million to retrain demobilised soldiers, provided aid for agriculture, primary health care, disease control, good governance and the protection of human rights. In the same period, the US State Department’s Bureau for Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) gave US $7.78 million for the resettlement of Liberian refugees. The US government has, so far, for fiscal 1999 spent US $32.98 million in humanitarian aid to Liberia. During this period, USAID and the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance reactivated primary care services in nine of Liberia’s counties thereby, USAID said, “significantly improving” primary health care coverage. The activities funded included basic curative services, reproductive and maternal/child health care, and the training of health workers. Others are the extended programme of immunization, health and hygiene education, pharmaceutical distribution, training of traditional birth attendants, reestablishing cost recovery systems and community involvement. USAID supported five health sector NGOs in fiscal year 1999 in reducing malnutrition-related deaths among children under five years old. They have done this by operating therapeutic and supplementary feeding centres in Montserrado, Bong, River Cess and Grand Bassa countries.