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8 November 2005 — Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC) welcomes the announcement that the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) will invest CA $7 million over three years to build on the results of the Tanzania Essential Health Interventions Project (TEHIP).

Canada’s Minister for International Cooperation, Aileen Carroll, announced the funding during the Canadian Society for International Health’s 12th annual Canadian Conference on International Health in Ottawa on 7 November 2005.

TEHIP’s basic premise is that the health of a population can be improved, not only by spending more money, but by spending money more wisely, according to where the needs are greatest.

A unique collaboration between IDRC and the Tanzanian Ministry of Health, TEHIP provided local health-planning teams in two large Tanzanian districts with tools, strategies, and modest funding increases that allowed them to target their new resources on the largest contributors to burden of disease and to improve the efficiency of on-the-ground health care delivery.

The project has helped to reduce the number of children dying by more than 40 per cent in the two districts. Adult mortality has also dropped by close to 20 per cent. Those declines put the districts of Rufiji and Morogoro well on their way to reaching the UN Millennium Development Goal of achieving a reduction in child mortality of two thirds by 2015 and, in the process, providing hope where often the outlook has been bleak.

The successes of TEHIP have been well documented by IDRC, both on its Web site (www.idrc.ca/tehip/) and in the book In_Focus: Fixing Health Systems, which was launched at 2004's Canadian Conference on International Health.

The CIDA funding will help extend to the rest of Tanzania the health intervention tools that were designed and tested in the two TEHIP districts.

Read the announcement on the CIDA Web site

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Information: Chantal Schryer, IDRC, (613) 236-6163 ext. 2598.  cschryer@idrc.ca

2005-11

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