Life expectancy of Nepalese people has significantly increased in the recent years however the morbidity rate is still high, mainly due to communicable diseases. Most of these diseases prevail because of lack of access to proper sanitation and the common practice of open defecation.

Effective interventions through a variety of community-based or national campaign approaches are necessary to reduce such diseases. HEAD-Nepal aims to implement nationwide communication programs encouraging people to engage themselves in healthy behavior.

Similarly higher rates of stillbirth exists in hilly and mountainous ecological zones, though Nepal has made considerable progress in improvement of maternal and child health.  It is surprising to notice that women who reported open defecation were at greater risk of stillbirth compared to those who had access to improved sanitation. 

This lack of proper education and sanitation compounded by poor economic conditions in those remote rural areas are the major factors for stillbirth. Hence, we believe that, a community-based intervention is necessary to increase awareness and provide basic health care access to women from these rural areas. This approach will have a massive and far-reaching impact on maternal and child health.In terms of maternal health, we intend to bring awareness regarding common preventable illnesses as well as diseases that can be detected earlier and hence managed effectively. One such disease is cervical cancer and it is the most common cause of cancer related death in Nepalese women. This is mainly because of the lack of proper screening and early detection of this disease at the government level. Hence, our initiative in this area is to conduct programs which can help in presenting data to program managers at the Ministry of Health to make future strategies in curbing cancer and other non-communicable diseases.