AID grant agreement no. 517-0247-G-00-3227-00 to the Centro de Educacion para la Salud (CES) in support of its programa cooperadores de la salud (health cooperators program) to improve the health of the rural Dominican poor living in the remote, mountainous regions by training them to prevent certain diseases

The cooperators will provide basic health education to rural families through community talks, house visits, and any other opportunity they may have. CES will provide advanced training to 14 experienced cooperators to enable them to train the 150 cooperators, who will learn how to prevent common diseases, including gastrointestinal, bacterial, and parasitical infections, and sexually transmitted diseases, as well as how to promote birth spacing. The training will emphasize preventive measures such as basic hygiene, water purification, construction and care of latrines, proper food storage and preparation, and breastfeeding. Cooperators will also receive training in first aid and in recognizing and treating, on a limited scale, basic diseases, such as diarrhea, vaginitis, fever, minor skin infections, parasitic infections that present obvious symptoms (pinworm, roundworms, ticks, scabies, lice, etc.), and the common cold. The program will directly benefit some 7,500 families totaling 63,000 people in two regions: (1) in the provinces of Santiago and La Vega, an area in the Cordillera Central around the cities of San Jose de Las Matas, Janico, and Jarabacoa; and (2) in the province of Dajabon, with a focus on the mountains near Loma de Cabrera and Restauracion.