Gobi, Mandarin Yintai shamo, great stony desert of N central Asia, c.500,000 sq mi (1,295,000 sq km), extending c.1,000 mi (1,610 km) from east to west across SE Mongolia and N China from the Da Hinggan (Great Khingan) Mts. to the Tian Shan; one of the world's largest deserts. The Gobi, located on a plateau from 3,000 to 5,000 ft (910-1,520 m) high, consists of a series of shallow alkaline basins; the western portion of the desert is entirely sandy. The Kerulen River is the Gobi's largest permanent stream; intermittent streams flow into small salt lakes or disappear into the sand. Nearly all the region's soil has been removed by the prevailing northwesterly winds and deposited in N central China as loess; fierce sand and wind storms are common. The Gobi has cold winters and short, hot summers. Precipitation is in the form of widely spaced cloudbursts. The Gobi's grassy fringe supports a small population of nomadic Mongolian tribes engaged in sheepherding and goatherding. The Gobi is crossed by a highway and by the Trans-Mongolian RR, which links Ulaanbaatar with Jining, China. The railway shortens the Moscow-Beijing run by c.700 mi (1,130 km). Coal is mined at Tawan-Tolgoi, Mongolia; oil fields are located at Saynshand, Mongolia, and Yumen, China; and there are copper and other mineral deposits. Many paleontological finds, including early mammals and dinosaur eggs, have been made in the Gobi. Prehistoric stone implements, some c.100,000 years old, have also been excavated.

Desert, Central Asia. One of the great desert and semidesert regions of the world, the Gobi stretches across Central Asia over large areas of Mongolia and China. It occupies an arc of land 1,000 mi (1,609 km) long and 300–600 mi (500–1,000 km) wide, with an estimated area of 500,000 sq mi (1,300,000 sq km). Contrary to the image often associated with a desert, much of the Gobi is not sandy but covered with bare rock.

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A selective primary health care (PHC) approach referred to collectively under the acronym GOBI-FFF, these are strategies that are being adopted to improve maternal and child health as part of primary care. Respectively they include,

• Growth monitoring
• Oral rehydration therapy
• Breast-feeding
• Immunization
• Family Spacing (planning)
• Female Education
• Food Supplementation

This was further reduced to GOBI only (selective PHC) on the priorities set by donors for poor countries.

References

Gatrell, A.C. (2002) Geographies of Health: an Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell.

Taylor, Carl E (2007) Personal Communication on 3/25/07 based on his recollection of the projects he implemented in China when Jim Grant was Executive Director of UNICEF.