Vehicle Donation to Help Pakistan Anticipate Future Disease Outbreaks

Our USAID Integrated Health Systems Strengthening and Service Delivery (IHSS-SD) activity donated 36 vehicles to Pakistan’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Province to help the country achieve its global health security agenda goals. U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Donald Blome handed the vehicles to KP Minister of Health Taimur Khan Jhagra at a public ceremony in KP, which is located along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan.

Each of KP’s 36 districts will receive a vehicle to facilitate rapid response teams’ provision of health services and supplies, including COVID-19 shots, to hardly reached communities. JSI has trained more than 3,000 rapid response team members across the entire country (and more than 400 in KP) to collect disease samples, send them to labs, and report potential outbreaks to the appropriate authorities.

As the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the U.S. was quick to provide assistance to strengthen Pakistan’s infectious disease surveillance and response system. This has included providing 62 million COVID-19 vaccines to date.

The USAID IHSS-SD activity works to improve public trust in governance and government services, enhance equitable delivery of basic health services, including COVID-19 care and vaccinations, and strengthen health security.