On April 21 Ted Gehr, director of the United States Agency for International Development (Usaid) for Brazil, visited the headquarters of Fiocruz Amazônia, in Manaus, for a closer look on the results of the three fields of action of the Amazônia Project: Science and Solidarity in the Fight against Covid-19 The project, launched in July 2022, is carried out by Fiocruz Amazônia and Fiotec, with the financial support of Usaid, in a partnership with NPI Expand and SITAWI Finanças para o Bem.

The delegation, which also included executives from Usaid and NPI Expand, was welcomed by the director of Fiocruz Amazônia, Adele Schwartz Benzaken, and the team of managers responsible for carrying out the project, which encompassed the states of Amazonas, Acre, Rondônia and Roraima.

The visit also included Ellen Halbach, from the Usaid Global Health Covid-19 Response; Natalia Lopez-Hurst, Usaid communication’s officer in Brasilia; Nina Best, leader of the NPI Expand National Team (Palladium BR); Beatriz Ferreira, senior business association of Palladium BR; Aysa Saleh, senior Programs manager of NPI Expand Brasil in Washington (Palladium US); and Felipe Storch, coordinator of Donation Agreements for Palladium BR.

Get to know NPI EXPAND
The United States Agency for International Development (Usaid), the New Partnerships Initiative, Expanding Health Partnerships (NPI EXPAND) and SITAWI (Finanças do Bem) make up the partnership created to support the Covid-19 response in the Brazilian Amazon region. “NPI EXPAND Brasil: The Response to Covid-19 in the Brazilian Amazon - Phase 2 is an initiative that involves civil society organizations in strategic partnerships to boost innovative and scalable solutions to strengthen the rapid response to emergencies and the fight against the disease. The first phase of the initiative, also known as “PPA Solidarity”, relied on the Partners for the Amazon Platform (PPA in Brazilian Portuguese). This innovative partnership with the private sector distributed more than 23,000 basic food baskets and personal hygiene kits, trained more than 500 community health agents, donated more than 1.4 million face masks made by local seamstresses and released Covid-19 prevention educational messages to more than 875 thousand people in the region.

The second and new phase of the initiative is promoting bigger resilience of the Amazon communities through broad support for vaccination against Covid-19, information and anti-fake news campaigns, and strengthening local health systems in the region with equipment and supplies to detect, prevent and control Covid-19 transmission, as well as to train health workers, follow up acute Covid-19 cases and treat post-Covid-19 sequelae syndrome.

Source: Fiocruz News Agency (AFN), with additional information from the NPI EXPAND team.