Mongolia and America are to fortify the cooperation on children’s health. Mongolia’s National Center for Maternal and Child Health (NCMCH) and leaders from Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) marked 20 years of institutional collaboration with a special “telemedicine” program and celebration honoring past accomplishments and outlining future efforts to better the health care of Mongolian children. During the telemedicine, the sides established a new collaborative agreement to build on efforts in education, telemedicine, research and physician exchange programs.

Since the collaboration began in 1995 the health care of Mongolian children has benefited from the care and training by CHLA physicians traveling to NCMCH to treat cases in children’s cancer, cardiology, infectious diseases, intensive care, pulmonology, gastroenterology, pediatric general and orthopedic surgery, endocrinology, adolescent medicine and rheumatology. Recently, the relationship has been reinvigorated by Mongolia’s successful infrastructure additions and infection control protocols at the NCMCH. This now allows CHLA physicians to work with colleagues to treat more complex cases. Through the past 20 years of collaboration Mongolia made dramatic progress in improving child health showing 44 percent decline on under-age-five mortality rate per 1,000 live births. Infant mortality rate per 1,000 live births showed some 30 percent decline.