• Transforming Ideas Into Action
• Combating Climate Change
• Treating HIV/AIDS & Malaria
  • Why Global Health
  • Our Approach
  • Access Programs
  • Malaria
  • Testing
  • Nutrition
  • Major Programs
  • Pediatric Program
  • Rural Programs
  • Human Resources for Health Programs
  • Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission
  • Operations Research
  • In-country Programs
  • What We've Accomplished
  • Information Center Resources
• Fighting Childhood Obesity
• Promoting Economic Opportunity
• Creating Sustainable Development in Africa
• Enabling Sustainable Development

Rural Program

Nearly 80 percent of people in the developing world live in rural communities where access to basic primary health care – as well as HIV/AIDS care and treatment – is often limited. The inability of governments to provide high-quality health services in these settings is largely due to a lack of resources to decentralize health services out of major urban areas, a lack of infrastructure and transportation to enable access to rural facilities, and difficulty recruiting healthcare workers to staff remote locations.

How CHAI helps

To address these challenges, CHAI has launched country-specific programs to develop practical, cost-effective, and comprehensive models to improve primary health care and HIV/AIDS care and treatment services in rural communities. In 10 countries across Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean, CHAI is leveraging existing resources to better organize health systems and to allow for improved health outcomes. These efforts are intended to be models that can be expanded nationally in targeted locations.

For example, in 2005, CHAI joined Partners in Health and the government of Rwanda to help advance a comprehensive primary healthcare model that aims to ensure that high-quality services are available to the rural poor. A central element of this approach is an "army" of trained, motivated, and compensated community health workers (CHWs) who provide basic services in the home. These CHWs have reduced the burden on patients of having to walk to health centers, thereby drastically increasing adherence rates and primary healthcare utilization rates. In the first year, hospital deliveries increased by 650 percent per month, more than 15,000 people were tested for HIV, and 2,800 people were placed on treatment. Building on these successes, CHAI has worked with the government of Rwanda to develop and roll-out a scalable and affordable framework to strengthen primary health care nationally.