TIRANA, OCTOBER 28, 2010     Today, Albania’s first national training center for obstetrics and gynecology opened its doors at the Queen Geraldina Maternity Hospital in Tirana. The training center, which is operated in cooperation with the University of Tirana Medical Faculty, received $10,000 worth of medical equipment from USAID that will allow medical students to practice safer and more effective clinical procedures for delivering babies and caring for mothers in Albania. 

The maternity hospital is Albania’s largest, delivering 6,000 babies annually and providing a range of obstetric and gynecological services for women.  According to the 2009 Albanian Demographic Health Survey, there has been a significant decline in infant mortality in Albania over the past 15 years (from 35 to 18 deaths per 1,000 live births), and Albania continues to have one of the highest mortality rates in the region. According to Ministry of Health 2008 figures, maternal mortality in Albania is still high compared with other European countries, with an estimated 21 deaths per 100,000 live births -- as compared, for example, to World Health Organization figures for France (5.3 deaths per 100,000 births) and Poland (3.02 deaths per 100,000 births).

USAID, in partnership with the Ministry of Health and its institutions throughout Albania, has worked for several years to support programs to improve the quality of maternal and child healthcare in Albania in order to reduce in maternal and infant mortality rates.  As part of assistance to the Ministry, USAID’s ACCESS-FP program, led by Jhpiego, introduced innovative ways to improve the quality of family planning services and developed Albania’s first national family planning protocols to standardize the delivery of family planning services across hospitals and clinics.  USAID currently has a program to establish Albania’s National Telemedicine Center that will support continuing medical education programs, and in the coming months USAID will begin a new five-year, $10 million program to increase access to health services for the poor and to improve health financing.