Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)

Japan International Cooperation Agency

Since the late 1950s, there has been a health sector partnership between Nepal and Japan. In an effort to achieve sustainable growth, JICA has supported numerous development projects and initiatives in Nepal.

Objectives

• Promoting public health initiatives with a primary emphasis on maternal, pediatric, and community health
• Promotion of health/medical service delivery systems, which are believed to address Nepal's main health-related issues

JICA's current cooperation

1.School health and nutrition project
The School Health and Nutrition Project is being carried out with technical assistance from JICA and the government of Nepal. This project's primary goal is to enhance the health and nutritional status of school-aged children in the targeted districts. The National School Health and Nutrition Strategy has also been institutionalized in a real sense by the Ministries of Health and Population and Education. Since the project is based on the National School Health and Nutrition Strategy, which the Nepali government authorized in 2006, technical help began to be provided in 2008.

2. Nutrition support project for women and children
It has been implemented in Nepal as a JICA Partnership initiative, whereby a local NGO (Nutrition Promotion and Consultancy Services) and a Japanese NGO (Child Fund Japan) collaborate to support Nepal's development efforts. The project's goal is to increase nutritional status and dietary consumption in a sustained manner. This initiative was initiated in June 2006 and ran for three years in six districts, from June 2006 to May 2009. Children under the age of five and women, particularly adolescent girls and pregnant and nursing moms, were the initiatives' intended audiences.

3. Strengtheneing eye-care system in Nepal
From 2007 to 2010, this initiative was also carried out as a JICA Partnership Program with Nepal Netra Jyoti Sangh, a local NGO, and organization for Ophthalmic Cooperation in Asia, a Japanese NGO. The project's goals are:

• By providing the Nepalese ophthalmologists with leadership trainings in Nepal, cutting-edge surgical techniques are transferred to them.
• If health nurses and caseworkers are educated about eye disease through practical training/basic textbooks, seminars, teaching materials, medicine, and rental mobile clinics, then eye disease can be prevented.

4. Volunteer Program
Senior and Junior volunteers have been sent to several hospitals with the aim of transferring technology to their Nepalese counterparts. 13 junior Volunteers are placed in various government health institutions and NGOs throughout Nepal, particularly in Kathmandu (Bir Hospital and Maternity Hospital), Lalitpur, and Kaski districts. They include 4 nurses, 4 midwives, 1 community development advisor, 3 physiotherapists, and 1 hygienist. Similar to this, 3 senior volunteers are assigned to the production of the rabies vaccine, the Royal Drugs Research Laboratory, and nursing education.