Abbott Fund Partner Profiled in New Best-Selling Book

The work of longtime Abbott Fund partner Sakena Yacoobi and the Afghanistan Institute of Learning (AIL) was profiled as a successful example of effective grassroots outreach in a bestselling new book, Half the Sky, by Pulitzer Prize winners Nicolas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. Yacoobi founded AIL in 1995 to help advance education and health for women in Afghanistan. Today, AIL provides maternal health education and training, and operates four rural health clinics that are staffed and operated by Afghan women, providing critical community health services.

The Abbott Fund has supported AIL since 2005, focusing on empowering Afghan women to help reverse the country's high maternal mortality rate and increase the survival and overall health of infants and children. This support includes more than $564,000 in grants to train female nurses and midwives to provide skilled assistance during labor and delivery, as well as care for infants and children. In addition, the partnership is supporting women's workshops that provide basic community health education. Abbott also has provided $4 million in product donations to AIL, including rehydration solutions, antibiotics, multivitamins and nutritional supplements. Direct Relief, a global humanitarian relief organization, assists with program management, including overseeing the distribution of Abbott Fund's grants and Abbott's product donations to AIL.

To date, more than 437,000 women and children have received services through this partnership:

64,000 women have received reproductive health services
152,000 patients have received vaccinations
84,000 children have received nutritional assessments
280,000 women have attended health education classes in clinics and in the community

The Abbott Fund is joined in its support of Yacoobi and AIL by the US-Afghan Women's Council, a public-private partnership focused on empowering Afghan women. The Council has been recognized as an outstanding example of public-private partnerships that advance the status, health and financial standing of women in Afghanistan. For more information on the Council, visit their Website.

Yacoobi and AIL also were recently profiled on Oprah Winfrey's Angel Network, which highlights the work of people who are improving the lives of others. The Angel Network Website includes a profile of Sakena's work, including photos and a link to the Abbott Fund video on YouTube.

For more information on the Abbott Fund's partnership with AIL in Afghanistan, please visit Abbott's Global Citizenship Web site, or the Abbott Fund Web site. You can also view a video of Abbott Fund's work with AIL on YouTube.

For more information on Half the Sky, visit the New York Times Web site, which has a review of the book and an extensive section dedicated to the topic of advancing the role of women in developing countries.

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