The Obama Administration's billion-dollar global healthcare endeavor continued to unfold this week with the awarding of a $20 million support-services contract (Award #AID-OAA-C-11-00161). The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) gave the contract to Cambridge, Mass.-based Management Science for Health, or MSH, which will be tasked with identifying "policy and implementation constraints” as well as potential hurdles to related investments across Africa. The African Strategies for Health initiative (Solicitation #M-OAA-GRO-EGAS-11-0001), as it is known, is a separate but corollary segment of the Administration's international healthcare program, which USAID is dividing into three primary projects.
As U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor previously reported, the largest of the three packages is the $500 million plan for Africa. The Asia/Middle East plan will receive $300 million, while $100 million is slated for programs in Latin America and The Caribbean (Monitor; May 6, 2011). Likewise, there is an estimated $60 million component of the global strategy strictly for communications and IT, which includes the crafting and dissemination of media messages on behalf of local governments to promote "healthy behaviors."
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