[As Prepared]

[Greetings]

Thank you for inviting me to represent the United States Agency for International Development or USAID. USAID is the lead U.S. government agency focusing on development. I bring you greetings from the U.S. Ambassador, the Honorable Sung Kim.

For over 50 years, USAID has been a committed development partner of the Philippines. In pursuit of our mutual objective to improve the health of families, during the last five years alone, USAID provided approximately 8 billion pesos through our projects that support family planning, maternal and child health and tuberculosis control programs in the country.

At the local level, USAID partners with Department of Health Regional Offices and local government agencies to strengthen the capacity of health service professionals to provide family planning services. Family planning saves lives. By enabling women and couples to practice healthy timing and spacing of pregnancies, family planning could reduce maternal deaths by 30 percent and child deaths by 25 percent globally.

This is why I am honored to be here to help launch the Bohol Provincial Training Network for Family Planning. I would like to congratulate you for your work to establish 14 field training facilities from the public and private sector that can now train up to 800 health providers yearly in long-acting family planning methods. This is a wonderful accomplishment. As a result of your network, service providers from Bohol no longer need to travel far distances to receive family planning training, and over 70 health facilities will now be able to deliver, uninterrupted, quality information and services on family planning to over 10,000 Boholanos men and women.

Through this network, the Province of Bohol is demonstrating its leadership to build the skills of health providers to deliver comprehensive and quality family planning services.

USAID certainly believes that capacity building and sustainability is a pillar of development programs - I commend you for your commitment to family planning and improving the lives to your community members. It has been established that when women are able to space births, they become healthier and are able have more economic opportunities in life. For every peso spent in family planning, up to 300 pesos can be saved in interventions aimed at achieving other development goals, such as investments in the education and health.

We encourage the family planning trainers to expand your network in order to enable as many women and men as possible access to family planning services. USAID hopes that other provinces will follow Bohol’s example and establish similar training networks. Bohol can be one of the leaders, demonstrating to others what successful programs can accomplish.

In closing, I would like to thank you for partnering with USAID. Our work together brings us closer to achieving a healthier, more stable and prosperous Philippines.

Maayong hapon at daghang salamat!