name: MERLIN
text: Merlin is the only specialist UK agency which responds worldwide with vital health care and medical relief for vulnerable people caught up in natural disasters, conflict, disease and health system collapse.
  
  Merlin first started working in Afghanistan in 1994. Today, working in partnership with a local organisation (Care of Afghan Families) and under the direction of the Ministry of Health, Merlin supports a network of 19 clinics in the north-eastern province of Badakhshan, serving a population of approximately 350,000. Funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Merlin's activities include supplying medicines and equipment, training health workers and refurbishing clinics. Merlin is also working to provide these clinics with clean water and sanitation facilities.
  
  Merlin is also helping to reduce the high maternal and child death rates that result from the lack of availability of reproductive health care, in particular due to the chronic shortage of midwives. In October 2004, through the support of a USAID-funded programme, Merlin opened a new midwife training centre based in Taloqan city in the north-eastern province of Takhar, to provide a comprehensive training programme for community midwifery students. Following an 18-month intensive training course, the first 21 midwives have now graduated and have returned to work in their own communities in remote villages across Takhar province, offering essential reproductive health care for a population of more than 84,000 women of child-bearing age. Merlin is now recruiting students for a second course which will begin in September 2006. 
  
  Merlin, in partnership with CAF, has trained 208 community health workers in Badakhshan to provide basic health care in remote villages, as well as to identify and refer seriously ill patients to a clinic or hospital. 
  
  Key achievements:
  
  * Refurbishment of 29 clinics in Takhar province completed in 2006 
  * More than 250 male and female community health workers in Takhar province trained and provided with essential medical supplies 
  * Training of 21 community midwifery students completed in 2006
  
  http://www.merlin.org.uk/