Finding a missing piece in Nepal

The Global Health Initiative, or GHI, is one of those huge federal programs that makes most people’s eyes glaze over.

GHI is the Obama administration’s well-intentioned effort to commit billions of dollars every year to take what it proclaims is a more comprehensive approach to health care in the developing world.

In our running Special Report titled “Healing the World,” GlobalPost has been reporting the ‘ground truth’ on GHI in many corners of the world to see where it lives up to its promise, and where it fails to.

In our most recent report, GlobalPost correspondent Hanna Ingber Win took a journey 7,000 miles from Washington, D.C. to follow that trail of promise and money into the remote village of Lamahi, Nepal.

There she found the overheated politics of Washington surrounding the prohibition against U.S. international aid directly funding abortions. That strict policy hangs over the Nepalese efforts to provide women with comprehensive reproductive health care.

In an example of ‘ground truth’ at its best, Win delves into the complexity of the issue, asking hard questions about policies made in Washington and what practical impact they have in the life-and-death situations that many women face from unsafe abortions.