Academy for Educational Development

The BASICS Project is a USAID contract to fight needless childhood deaths in the developing world. Supporting families and communities, the $100 million contract will help expand effective child health interventions like newborn health, vitamin A supplementation and other essential nutrition actions, immunization, pediatric AIDS, the treatment of diarrhea and pneumonia, and malaria control. What are the projects goals -- The BASICS II Project closed on 30 September 2004. The follow-on project called BASICS, started on 1 October 2004. It supports activities to increase the use of child health and nutrition interventions by families, communities and health systems. USAID is an active member of the newly launched Child Survival Partnership that is a global alliance for renewing the fight against needless childhood deaths. It includes other international organizations such as WHO, UNICEF, the World Bank, CIDA, the Gates Foundation, and academic institutions such as the Johns Hopkins University and others. BASICS is an important vehicle for carrying out USAID's child survival agenda that has been active since 1985, when Congress created the Child Survival Program. Since then, USAID has obligated more than $5 billion for child survival, HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases. In addition, USAID has provided more than $2.5 billion to child survival programs in developing countries for maternal and child immunization; prevention and treatment of respiratory infections, diarrheal diseases, and malaria; breastfeeding; nutrition, and water and sanitation.