Gender and Development

Lao People's Democratic Republic

Primary Health Care Expansion Project, 2000

With a per capita income of $283 and a half of the population living below poverty, Lao PDR is one of the poorest countries in the Asia Pacific Region. The rural poor, in particular women and children, ethnic minorities and other vulnerable groups living in the inaccessible northern hills, suffer from extremely poor health. The government, being aware of the importance of primary health care (PHC), requested ADB to support expansion and improvement of PHC delivery especially in remote areas and to vulnerable groups.

In response, the Primary Health Care Expansion Project was developed and approved in 2000. The Project aims to expand PHC in eight northern provinces of the country and will help to improve access to and quality of essential preventive, promotive and curative health services at village, health center and district levels. Component 1 will develop PHC by increasing access, improving quality of services, strengthening reproductive health services, and supporting village health care and promotion. Component 2 will strengthen the institutional capacity for PHC service delivery.

In order to outreach the most difficult population i.e. ethnic minority women and children, the following innovative mechanisms have been introduced:

• Provision of targeted reproductive health services to women;
• Support to women's career development, especially those of ethnic minorities, as health staff by training village health care providers, volunteers and trainees;
• Provision of basic education and scholarships to ethnic minority women so they can be prepared for technical training;
• Health center designs to provide privacy for women during examination and treatment;
• Gender issues included in health staff's training courses;
• Gender-disaggregated monitoring of use of health services;
• Promotion of female staff increase among the project management