"This investment will apply cross-cutting approaches to the health sector, including health system strengthening and human resources development with a special focus on women and children," Usaid Assistant Administrator for Global Health Anne Peterson said in a statement released in Nairobi.
She explained that the programme was aimed at breaking the "vicious cycle of poverty, malnutrition and infectious diseases, so that women and children are healthier and families are better able to feed, clothe and educate their children."
"Extremely poor nutrition has exacerbated the disease epidemic including malaria, diarrhoea and respiratory infections resulting in very high child mortality. Sub-clinical vitamin A deficiency affects one of every seven children and goiter is common," said the statement.
The programme, to be managed by Sudanese people, will focus on the Eastern Equatoria, Upper Nile, Southern Blue Nile, Bahr el Ghazal and Nuba Mountains regions, with help from US Centre for Disease Control (CDC) and the Boston-based John Snow International, a US public health voluntary group.
Currently Khartoum and Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) are edging nearer to a final peace deal in Kenya to end Africa's longest war that erupted in 1983 and has claimed at least 1,5-million people and displaced more than four-million others.
"In anticipation for a peace agreement, USAID has started to shift emphasis from providing humanitarian and emergency relief to working with SPLM to rebuilding southern Sudan," the statement noted. - Sapa-AFP
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