AID cooperative agreement no. PDC-0284-A-00-1123-00 with the International Eye Foundation (IEF) to support a Vitamin A and child survival project in the Lower Shire Valley of Malawi

The grant to IEF is jointly funded under the Technical Support/Child Survival project (9380500) and the Vitamin A project (9380284). IEF will use a number of approaches. It will work with the existing health infrastructure to strengthen services -- the expanded program of immunization (EPI) and oral rehydration therapy (ORT) -- already available throughout the Valley. And it will initiate services (vitamin A supplementation, nutrition education, village health promoter training) that are currently not available except in the 45 villages where IEF is already working. Compared to current activities, IEF will relinquish much of its logistic decisionmaking and supervisory activities, but will assume more responsibilities in training (especially training of trainers), program management, and coordination of NGO and MOH activities. Vitamin A activities will be fully integrated into mobile and static under-five services (EPI and ORT) of the MOH, the two hospitals, and ADRA. Community-based rosters of young children and pregnant women will be the key component in the management of these services, and will be used to target villages or areas with low acceptance of EPI, frequent episodes of illness requiring ORT, and potentially blinding diseases. IEF will also help village health promoters initiate AIDS education.