Mongolia

The aim of these inter­ven­tions is to sup­port Mon­go­lia in the treat­ment of car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease, which con­tin­ues to be the lead­ing cause of death in the coun­try. Since 2012, the project has achieved nation­al coverage.

In addi­tion, Lux­em­bourg Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion has been sup­port­ing the mater­nal and child health care sec­tor in Mon­go­lia since 2007 through the Unit­ed Nations Pop­u­la­tion Fund (UNF­PA). Talks have been launched with the Mon­go­lian author­i­ties in order to joint­ly iden­ti­fy future sup­port from Lux­em­bourg in these two areas.

Because of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and, more specif­i­cal­ly, the clo­sure of the bor­ders since Jan­u­ary 2020, there has been a severe impact on the deliv­ery of the pro­gramme, lead­ing to its exten­sion for a year in order to move those activ­i­ties in the project that have not been imple­ment­ed to 2021. 

In the con­text of the response to COVID-19 in Mon­go­lia, Lux­em­bourg Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion has sup­port­ed two inter­ven­tions since June 2020, with bud­gets of EUR 345000 and EUR 486200 respectively. 

The first con­tri­bu­tion made it pos­si­ble to pro­vide a pos­i­tive response to a request from the Unit­ed Nations Pop­u­la­tion Fund (UNF­PA) to boost the capac­i­ties of the mater­nal health ser­vices through the unin­ter­rupt­ed sup­ply of vital ser­vices to preg­nant women, in Ulaan­baatar and in four bor­der provinces. In addi­tion, the project sought to pro­tect the safe­ty and dig­ni­ty of women and girls in quar­an­tine, includ­ing health­care providers.

The sec­ond con­tri­bu­tion was launched in col­lab­o­ra­tion with LuxDev, with the aim of boost­ing the capac­i­ties of car­dio­vas­cu­lar ser­vices as part of the fight against COVID-19. It made var­i­ous types of bio­med­ical and essen­tial pro­tec­tive equip­ment avail­able that were need­ed in order to pre­vent the spread of the virus and for the treat­ment of COVID-19 patients with under­ly­ing car­dio­vas­cu­lar disease.

Final­ly, in July 2021, anoth­er UNF­PA project with a total bud­get of USD 600000 was fund­ed by Lux­em­bourg Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion. This new tran­si­tion project aims to ensure the pro­tec­tion of mater­nal, sex­u­al and repro­duc­tive health and rights in Mon­go­lia and specif­i­cal­ly in the city of Ulaan­baatar dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic in order to pre­vent fur­ther increas­es in mater­nal mor­tal­i­ty and the num­ber of unwant­ed pregnancies.

2021 high­lights:

• 534 patients are now enrolled in the heart fail­ure pro­gramme, an increase of 13.6% over 2020. In addi­tion, the NCC, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with oth­er nation­al part­ners, has launched a study on the preva­lence of heart fail­ure in Mongolia.
• After two years of aca­d­e­m­ic train­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Maas­tricht, an inter­ven­tion­al car­di­ol­o­gist returned to the NCC and, with his team, intro­duced new treat­ment tech­nolo­gies for Mon­go­lia, notably in the treat­ment of arrhyth­mias, the implan­ta­tion of pace­mak­ers and the implan­ta­tion of intrac­ar­diac devices.
• 17 clin­i­cal guide­lines and pro­to­cols for the man­age­ment of car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease have been devel­oped at the nation­al lev­el and are now avail­able to Mon­go­lian doctors.
• Dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, a hybrid ver­sion of the MnCar­dio telemed­i­cine sys­tem was devel­oped and is ready to be used for telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion between doc­tors treat­ing COVID-19 patients.
• In 2021, the project’s capac­i­ty-build­ing and pre­ven­tion activ­i­ties con­tin­ued in a dig­i­tal for­mat (using webi­na­rs). A total of 4 100 med­ical staff mem­bers were trained via an online edu­ca­tion­al platform.
• The two major annu­al events, the Win­ter Sem­i­nar and the Nation­al Car­dio­vas­cu­lar Dis­ease Con­fer­ence, were held entire­ly in dig­i­tal form in 2021 and attend­ed by more than 1 900 participants.
• Because of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the total num­ber of open-heart surg­eries per­formed at the NCC decreased from 178 (in 2020) to 149 in 2021. Since no exter­nal sur­gi­cal sup­port or on-site train­ing was per­formed in 2021, these surg­eries were per­formed inde­pen­dent­ly (with­out peer sup­port) and often by ​“junior” sur­geons with less than 20 years’ expe­ri­ence. Thus, 68 of the 149 open-heart surg­eries were per­formed by these junior sur­geons who will take over in a few years.