CARE in Laos

Together with the Laotian government, with whom we have a close partnership, we tackle three main issues.

In Laos we:

fight HIV and AIDS
help people to protect themselves against future disasters
improve health care

We tackle: rural development – training people with the skills and tools they need to find long-term work and to look after their land; running reproductive health schemes to ensure that men and women understand major health issues such as HIV and AIDS; and preventing the spread of bird flu by educating people about the risks and how to prevent it.

CARE in action:

Fighting HIV and AIDS
We train people about reproductive health issues such as HIV and AIDS and help them to find alternative work such as running restaurants or small businesses. Our work in this area has been so successful that other international aid agencies in the country have started similar projects.

Bird flu
We are the leading international aid organisation looking into preventing the spread of avian flu by training people to recognise the symptoms. We also show them how to reduce the risk of contracting the virus and teach them what to do in case of an outbreak. As the disease continues to spread throughout many parts of the world, with a particular concentration in South East Asia, we believe that preventing its spread will be central to our work in years to come.

Droughts
Recently, successive years of droughts and then floods have severely affected many poor communities in rural Laos. We protect people from the risk of natural disaster by strengthening the position they are in. For example, we help communities to build or improve irrigation systems so they can cultivate a second, dry-season rice crop, to reduce the effects of drought on the traditional wet-season crop. That way, people are able to grow more than one rice crop in the year, meaning that they have more to eat, and also have an excess to sell.