As world leaders prepare to meet at the UN in New York, I met with two heroes – Sierra Leonean midwife Dr Joan Shepherd and British mummy blogger Christine Mosler – to prepare for our work to press world leaders here to save mothers’ and children’s lives by filling the gap of 3.5 million health workers.
Watch the recording of the blogging conference
http://ustre.am/:1aHir Vlogging Workshop Session
http://ustre.am/:1aHIs Practical Film Workshop Session
http://ustre.am/:1aI0R East Africa Food Crisis Session
http://christinemosler.wordpress.com/
This weekend my family are scattered far and wide. The Tall One is tramping the hilltops of Wales in his wet weather gear trying to find his way home with a map and compass fuelled only by Super Noodles and KP peanuts. He is on his practice expedition for his Silver Duke of Edinburgh award.
My beautiful girl will be twirling and whirling at ballet before trotting off with her sleeping bag tucked under her arm to spend the night not sleeping at a sleepover.
My Mum is in charge on Saturday while my husband is at work and he takes over the reins for Sunday, two children and one wife down on his usual quota. Next week friends and family are helping the family machine to keep running smoothly in my absence.
Fortunately, the past month has been quite slow. I had only 6 sick children to treat in the village. One young girl had diarrhea but her mother came to me immediately, and I gave her oral rehydration solution and zinc, so she was fine after five days. I also treated five cases of malaria. Most of children recovered quickly.
One child’s case, however, was complicated because of our local customs. Samadie is 3 years old. Her mother Mariam is 21. Mariam isn’t officially married yet – she lives with her partner Zoumana in a village 20 miles away. In the Sido region, an unmarried couple can live together and have children if their parents approve the arrangement. Both parties’ families then save up for two or three years until they can afford an official wedding. In such a relationship, the woman stays with her partner during the dry season and returns to her village to help harvest her own family’s fields when the rains come, usually from June to September.
“Fighting for the Right to Safe Motherhood”
Rose Mlay leads push for improved working conditions for midwives, better health for mothers and children in Tanzania
Rose Mlay has been a dedicated advocate for maternal and child health ever since she decided to become a midwife in 1974. Seventeen years later, Rose began to teach maternal and child health courses at a national university and went on to establish the White Ribbon Alliance in Tanzania, where she works as the national coordinator.
In some parts of the world a doctor, nurse or midwife can be just around the corner, but for many, these health workers can be too far. “Going the Distance” – 3 minute documentary about the realities of people living in different parts of the world and their access to health workers. Watch it, Like it and Share it!
Innovation can transform a company, a culture, and even the world. But innovation doesn’t have to come in the form of a gadget. It can come in the form of a smiling neighbor knocking at a family’s door, toting some basic supplies and the skills to address matters of life and death.
Take Madalitso, a community health worker in rural Malawi who never finished high school.
Trained by Save the Children with U.S. funding, but supported by her own government, she embodies an innovative approach to saving mothers’ and children’s lives amidst the global health worker shortage that is straining much of the developing world.
By Julie Steenhuysen
CHICAGO (Reuters) – The annual number of children who die before they reach age five is shrinking, falling to 7.6 million global deaths in 2010 from more than 12 million in 1990, UNICEF and the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.
Overall, 12,000 fewer children under age 5 die each day than a decade ago, the groups said in their annual report on child mortality.
Even in sub-Saharan Africa, where the burden of child mortality is greatest, the rate of improvement has more than doubled in the past decade, a sign that even the poorest regions can make progress, said Anthony Lake, executive director of the United Nations Children’s Fund or UNICEF.
Despite the improvement, more than 21,000 children die every day from preventable causes, he said in a statement.
“Focusing greater investment on the most disadvantaged communities will help us save more children’s lives, more quickly and more cost effectively,” Lake said.
Between 1990 and 2010, the annual number of deaths in children under five fell to 57 per 1,000 births in 2010, from 88 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1990.
Even so, improvements in child mortality rates will not be enough to meet the United Nation’s goal set in 2000 of reducing child mortality by two-thirds by 2015, and the groups say more money is needed.
“This is proof that investing in children’s health is money well spent, and a sign that we need to accelerate that investment through the coming years,” Dr. Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organization, said in a statement.
Tibebu Girma,
and Sister Adefash Gdaffi — the two senior clinical nurses — kindly showed us around with
several other colleagues.
Here’s a picture of Tibebu at the new outpatient clinic for children under the age of five.
We heard of the ongoing challenges they face:
Read more
When Sierra Leone launched its Everyone campaign, it didn’t want to fall back on the tired, standard formula of simply pointing out a problem and looking to government for solutions. What they really wanted, was CHANGE. Read more
