Despite remarkable progress, Timor-Leste’s maternal and under-5 mortality rates remain the highest in Southeast Asia. To help save lives, USAID works to expand access to high-quality health services for all Timorese – especially women and children – encouraging best health practices and quality reproductive health care.

USAID/Timor-Leste Mission Director James S. Wright Quotes on Gender Based Violence (GBV)

USAID efforts helped boost the percentage of women who receive postnatal care during the first seven days after delivery from 83 percent to 99 percent between 2017-2018.

As a young nation lacking well-developed public institutions, Timor-Leste faces significant challenges to improve its health care system. Human capacity in health care is weak due to a poor education system. The country also has high fertility rates and poor maternal and neonatal health.

• Helped the Ministry of Health deliver 720 health promotion sessions to 11,317 people of which 8,908 (79 percent) were women. These sessions promote the importance of antenatal care visits, danger signs during pregnancy and delivery, family planning, nutrition education, sanitation and hygiene education.
• In collaboration with health services, reduced stock-outs of reproductive health commodities from 25 percent in FY 2017 to 21 percent in FY 2018, an important milestone because Timor-Leste has the highest fertility rate in South East Asia and a low rate of contraceptive usage by women of reproductive age as well as a significant number of women who want but cannot get reproductive health assistance.
• Increased the number of children who received required immunizations by the age of 12 months from a baseline of 74 percent in FY 20157 to 100 percent in FY 2018.
• Couple Years of Protection, a useful measure of modern contraception use on an annual basis, has risen from a baseline of 2,042 to 5,076 in FY 2018, a 147-percent increase. The gain from FY 2017 to FY 2018 was 8 percent.