We count on health workers every day, whether it’s to administer vaccines to our children, guide our families to more healthful habits, or provide us with lifesaving surgeries. That’s why health workers need the best, most up-to-date training possible—communities everywhere are counting on them.

IntraHealth works to give health workers around the world the skills and support they need to succeed.

We partner with local governments and organizations to build strong health systems that provide the supervision, equipment, and supplies health workers need to do their jobs, and ensure that health workers are fairly compensated. We work with nursing schools, medical schools, and other health training institutions to help countries prepare new health workers and keep their existing workers up-to-date with the latest skills.

Read our stories about training and education.

• Loan Program Brings Peace of Mind to Kenya’s Aspiring Frontline Health Workers November 17, 2016
• Imelda Achieng Wants to Find a Cure for HIV for Her Mum August 3, 2016
• Community Nursing through the Eyes of a Nurse May 11, 2016

IntraHealth is committed to promoting gender equality in health sectors around the world, and we make it an integral part of our work. Gender-based disparities and inequalities can undermine the quality of health care for clients and endanger the safety and morale of health workers, most of whom are women.

We work with partners, clients, policy-makers, and national organizations worldwide to develop appropriate strategies to eliminate gender-based discrimination, gender-based violence, and gender-based barriers to health care.

Our gender approach is always adapted to local needs and opportunities, and includes:

• Conducting gender analyses and planning.
• Promoting equal opportunity and treatment in employment, training, and education.
• Affirming girls’ and women’s social and economic rights through interventions such as policy change and increasing their access to economic resources.
• Responding to gender-based violence in health care facilities and in clients’ lives.

Read our stories about gender.

In a childbirth emergency, health workers have the power to save women’s and babies’ lives. That’s why at IntraHealth we do everything we can to make sure health workers in communities everywhere are on the job and prepared for those emergencies.

We know that training and deploying health workers where they’re needed most reduces a mother’s risks drastically. We know that health workers play a key role in providing services and information about contraception, which prevents 77 million unintended pregnancies, 24 million unsafe abortions, and 125,000 women’s deaths every year.

And we know that investing in health workers is one of the most cost-effective ways to improve global health.

Read our stories about maternal health.

Far too many mothers and young children still die from preventable causes throughout West Africa. But family planning is a fantastic launching pad for improving the health of mothers and babies. Not only does it drastically reduce the number of families that lose mothers and infants, it also allows women to limit or space births and prevents 24 million abortions per year.

In the past year, 8.4 million more women and girls around the world began using modern methods of contraception. And thanks in part to IntraHealth’s Informed Push Model of contraceptive distribution, Senegal’s modern contraceptive prevalence rate has risen from 12.1% in 2010 to 20.1% in 2014.

The Informed Push Model prevents stockouts of women’s favorite methods and reinvests proceeds from clients’ purchases back into the public contraceptive supply system to ensure the constant flow and availability of products.

And now we’re working with Senegal to expand the model nationwide.

Read our stories about family planning.

The next 15 years are going to make global health history. They may mark the end of the most damaging epidemic in our lifetimes, during which countries around the world have rallied together to face a unifying threat.

HIV has killed over 39 million people during the past three decades. Today we know how to treat, prevent, and control HIV. And testing is key.

To end the AIDS epidemic by 2030, as UNAIDS proposes to do, we must hone our overall approach to it. Think community-based testing campaigns, provider-initiated testing and counseling, and even self-testing.

Side-by-side with our in-country partners, IntraHealth is working to meet this ambitious goal, and to make sure each country has the health workers and strong health systems it needs to support these approaches.

Read our stories about HIV.

Kenya’s health professional students often struggle to pay their annual tuition fees—usually about 70,000 Kenyan Shillings, or $767, for public middle-level colleges. Many students simply drop out before earning their diplomas and never enter the health workforce.

But the Afya Elimu Fund—a joint venture of IntraHealth International’s FUNZOKenya project, the Higher Education Loans Board, the Kenya Healthcare Federation, and others—makes flexible, low-interest loans available to students studying in accredited programs for nursing, clinical medicine, laboratory sciences, nutrition, and health records information.

The loans allow students to continue their education without disruption and eventually join the workforce, where they’ll help Kenya meet the country’s health care needs.

Read more about our Afya Elimu Fund.