We started in China more than 30 years ago. Today we have field offices in Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam, and our work is improving health throughout the region.

Cambodia

Cambodia’s health indicators are some of the most alarming in the world: The average life expectancy is 54 years, almost one in ten children live for less than one year, and the maternal mortality ratio is 34 times the ratio in the United States. Since 1995, PATH has been supporting the reconstruction and development of the health system. From our first program with UNICEF addressing childhood illness to our emerging work on tuberculosis detection and treatment, PATH’s ability to forge relationships with the private sector in Cambodia has been essential. Over the past 10 years, PATH has expanded its work in the country and now implements a range of projects.

Our projects in Cambodia currently include:

  • Evaluating the use of Uniject® devices filled with oxytocin, tetanus toxoid vaccine, and hepatitis B vaccine.
  • Contributing to early work in surveillance for Japanese encephalitis.
    Strengthening the financial sustainability of immunization services.
  • Reaching service providers and communities with information about HIV and AIDS, migrant health, reproductive health (particularly emergency contraception), and tuberculosis.
  • In collaboration with both government and private-sector partners, building the capacity of health managers and staff to provide better and more user-friendly services and to make use of new technologies.

China

Since 1979, PATH has collaborated with Chinese government agencies, NGOs, research institutes, and manufacturers to improve health, particularly reproductive, maternal, and child health. In the 1980s, we helped the People’s Republic of China develop new facilities for the manufacture of oral and injectable contraceptives, condoms, and IUDs. We have since partnered with Chinese agencies in adolescent reproductive health, HIV/AIDS prevention, and vaccines and immunization. After nearly 25 years of activity in China, PATH opened its representative office in Beijing in 2003.

Currently, we are:

  • Implementing programs to empower and enhance the health of young girls in rural China. We are giving them the information they need to make healthy decisions—and the confidence to stand by them, despite gender inequities.
  • Increasing access to Japanese encephalitis vaccine through work with both private- and public-sector partners, including collaboration with China’s Centers for Disease Control to evaluate and enhance JE surveillance and immunization systems.
  • Working with research partners to develop new screening tests that detect human papillomavirus (a precursor of cervical cancer) and are safe, accurate, reliable, and acceptable to women and health care providers. As part of this project, we are screening thousands of women for this fatal but preventable disease.
  • Supporting development of a malaria vaccine candidate through partnerships that include a Chinese biotechnology enterprise and the World Health Organization.
  • Investigating the market needs and feasibility of introducing fortified rice into China.
  • Advancing rotavirus vaccine development with the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products.

India

With a population of more than one billion people, India is brimming with diverse ethnicities, languages, and cultures. PATH began its work in India the late 1990s, bringing governments, communities, private-sector companies, and experienced public health practitioners together to address some of the country’s most crucial health problems.

One of our first large projects was the USAID-funded Program for Advancements of Commercial Technology—Child and Reproductive Health (PACT-CRH). In early 2000, the scope of our India program expanded with a major immunization initiative for Andhra Pradesh state. Today, with offices in New Delhi and Hyderabad, PATH’s India projects focus on immunization, HIV/AIDS, injection safety, and microbicides.

Current activities include:

  • Strengthening routine immunization services and introducing new vaccines (including hepatitis B vaccine) into India’s Universal Immunization Programme. We are also the secretariat of the India Injection Safety Coalition, for which we were a founding member.
  • Creating a model project for immunization services in Andhra Pradesh, where PATH and the government achieved universal coverage of hepatitis B vaccine for all infants for the first time.
  • Enhancing the capacity of the private sector to produce high-quality child and reproductive health products by providing financial and technical support through the PACT-CRH project.
  • Researching the introduction, acceptability, and regulatory environment of products such as microbicides, the female condom, and the improved diaphragm.
  • Launching the Tarang project, which will work to reduce HIV incidence by helping individuals and communities assess risks and vulnerabilities to HIV and STIs—and build the skills, knowledge, and motivation to adopt preventive behaviors.

Indonesia

PATH opened an office in Jakarta in 1983 and began serving Indonesia’s ethnically and culturally diverse population of 200 million people. Until our offices in Jakarta and Banda Aceh closed in October 2009, our projects in Indonesia focused on improving maternal and neonatal health, introducing new and improved technologies, and strengthening immunization systems. These efforts achieved significant changes in health policy and increased Indonesia’s capacity to address its own health problems.

Our work in Indonesia focused on:

  • Increasing midwives’ capacity to administer hepatitis B vaccine through the Uniject™ device. Our efforts helped Indonesia become an early adopter of the device, which is now manufactured and filled with hepatitis B vaccine in Bandung.
  • Developing hospital-based surveillance programs for Japanese encephalitis and rotavirus. Getting a handle on the prevalence of these diseases helped decision-makers allocate resources appropriately and provided valuable information about where health officials should focus outreach efforts.
  • Advancing technologies such as solar-powered refrigerators for vaccines, diagnostic tests for tuberculosis, and emergency contraception.
  • Implementing projects that energized communities around maternal and neonatal health. We helped communities recognize the value of immunization and other healthy practices, such as breastfeeding. We also helped them find new ways to participate in their health systems—for example, by setting up registries to record births, deaths, and causes of deaths.
  • Identifying barriers to tuberculosis treatment and compliance. We worked with the National Tuberculosis Program, the World Health Organization, and the Royal Netherlands Tuberculosis Foundation.
  • Collaborating with a range of groups—manufacturers, local and international suppliers, government groups, pharmacy associations, and others—to increase the availability of interventions such as emergency contraception and hepatitis B vaccine.

Thailand

As a hub for many of our activities in Asia, our Thailand program has long been a leader in HIV/AIDS prevention and adolescent health. When the AIDS epidemic was just emerging in the 1980s, we provided HIV-prevention training to factory workers and crucial training to health colleagues. Now joined by two other PATH offices in the Mekong Region, our staff in Thailand are developing innovative behavior change interventions and advancing significant public health technologies.

A particularly important aspect of our work in Thailand has been increasing the capacity of pharmacy and drugstore personnel, who are often the first—and sometimes only—health care providers for some populations. Working closely with the Ministry of Public Health, our staff have conducted training and developed resources that help pharmacy staff provide critical health information to consumers and ensure that quality and safety standards are met. These experiences have served as a model for programs that are now underway in Cambodia, Vietnam, Kenya, and Nicaragua.

Currently, our projects in Thailand focus on:

  • Reaching adolescents with information and skills through an innovative e-learning tool (www.teenpath.net).
  • Improving the health and quality of life for migrants and their families through the PROMDAN project, which is strengthening the health care resources available to migrants, helping prevent communicable diseases (especially HIV and tuberculosis), and promoting health and well-being.
  • Working in partnership with the Ministry of Education to implement sexuality education in schools and conduct other youth-focused activities.
  • Developing model interventions that improve pharmacists’ capacity to provide information, products, and referrals.

Vietnam

PATH began working in Vietnam in the early 1980s and established an office in Hanoi in 1997. Our work there has spanned the fields of maternal and newborn health, child survival, immunization, adolescent health, reproductive health, HIV and AIDS, tuberculosis, and influenza. In addition, we have conducted research on a range of important health topics.

Our current work includes:

  • Conducting a demonstration project that will assist the government in making decisions about whether and how to introduce vaccines to prevent cervical cancer.
  • Strengthening the capacity of private pharmacies to provide health services—and linking them into existing community health systems.
  • Increasing access to existing HIV and tuberculosis services by strengthening the capacity of pharmacists to identify disease symptoms and make referrals.
  • Establishing a model for surveillance of Japanese encephalitis.
  • Identifying whether and how establishing a market for household water storage and treatment products could help bring safe water to the poor.
  • Researching economic issues that affect access to medication abortion.
  • Assessing current vaccine supply chains to predict future challenges and create effective logistics systems for vaccine distribution.
  • Creating an environment to implement a total market approach to enhancing equitable and sustained access to family planning services.
  • Expanding diarrheal disease control initiatives through the development of national-level guidelines and establishing new interventions.
  • Increasing coverage of timely hepatitis B birth-dose vaccinations by developing action plans to address adverse events following immunizations.
  • Advancing technologies for the manufacture and future use of influenza vaccines.

Photo: Carib Nelson.