Every child has a right to healthcare

Report on healthcare projects in Albania, 2001

Many of the areas where Plan Albania works are lacking in basic health facilities such as health clinics, trained medical professionals, and they have no access to health-related information and resources. Growing up healthy in Albania is not always guaranteed.

Plan focuses it's efforts on the health of children and their mothers, in order to eventually improve conditions for the whole community. Issues being addressed include the following:

• the lack of primary health care in communities with whom we work
• the health and development of children
• the reproductive health of women

To achieve results in these areas, Plan works with other non-governmental organisations, and the ministry of health to develop projects in the following areas:

• community-based health management
• child survival
• nutrition
• early childhood care and development
• prevention and control of infectious diseases
• reproductive health
• HIV/AIDS
• family planning
• maternal health

Knowledge and education is the key to self-sufficiency
In addition to providing increased health care services, we also focus on educating poeple on basic healthcare and hygiene issues. The eventual goal is always to enable communities to manage health care services without external help: providing the knowledge and education for communities to identify their own health needs and to take active roles in decisions affecting their health.

Educating the next generation
Children play an important role in health education projects. They are sources of information both to their peers and to their parents. They are also the future of their communities.

Children's health clubs
Plan works with students to organise child-to-child health clubs. Groups usually consist of thirty children  beween ages 11-14. In 2001, close to 200 children took part in this project, discussing topics such as personal hygiene, HIV/AIDS, nutrition and infectious diseases.

Training professionals and mothers
Plan runs programs for training medical professionals, community health workers, and mothers throughout Albania on relevant health issues and practices. Last year Plan provided women in twelve communities with nutritional education, focusing on growth and weight monitoring and the importance of nutrition in the health of children. Expectant mothers were taught the impact of their diet in the health of their unborn child, with classes on key vitamins, breast-feeding, and nutrition of young children.

Other activities in 2001 included the building of two healthcare facilities and the renovation of four others; the provision of dental checkups to over eighteen hundred children, and the training of over seventy health workers.