Environmental Health at USAID

Environmental factors play an important role in death and disease among young children and for leading infectious diseases. Diarrhea, caused by unsafe water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene, accounts for 15 to 18 percent of child deaths annually. Malaria is responsible for 2.5 million deaths each year, mostly among young children. Acute lower respiratory infections (ARI), mainly pneumonia – which has been closely associated with exposure to indoor smoke from cooking with biomass fuels, are the leading cause of death for children under five years of age.

In its environmental health programs, USAID aims to provide global leadership in the development of new and improved interventions to prevent illness and death associated with environmental factors, and to use innovative approaches to take these interventions to scale within the context of USAID’s field activities.