Kathmandu: The Female Community Health Volunteers of Nepal (FCHVs) were announced as winners of the newly instituted WHO South-East Asia Region’s Award for Public Health Champion, recognizing their decades-long contribution to strengthening community health systems.
Alongside the FCHVs, disability inclusion champion Dr. Satendra Singh and the Lepra Society were also announced as winners of the award.
According to the The FCHVs were recognized for their transformative role in improving maternal and child health, boosting immunization coverage, promoting nutrition, and managing disease outbreaks, even in geographically and socially challenging regions of Nepal. Their efforts have been pivotal in reducing maternal mortality from 901 per 100,000 live births in 1990 to 151 in 2021, and under-five mortality from 162 to 28 per 1,000 live births, according to NDHS 2022 and UNICEF data.
Internationally acknowledged as a low-cost, high-impact model, the FCHV program is seen as a replicable example of sustainable, gender-equitable, and community-led health systems strengthening.
The WHO South-East Asia Regional Office announced the Award for Public Health Champion in June this year to honor individuals and institutions whose extraordinary contributions have created lasting public health impacts across the region. A total of 50 nominations were received from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Thailand.
The awardees will be felicitated during a special event on the sidelines of the 78th session of the WHO South-East Asia Regional Committee meeting in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
