Your Voice: Frontline Health Workers Are the Unsung Heroes of Global Health Progress

Carol Bales — Mon, 02 Jun 2014 18:45:38 +0000

This post originally appeared on USAID’s FrontLines. Your Voice, a continuing FrontLines feature, offers personal observations from USAID staff and development voices. Chris Thomas is a communications adviser in the Bureau for Global Health.

With her 3-month-old son, John, lethargic, feverish and vomiting, Korto Kinne sought help in the remote Sinje resettlers camp in the northwestern corner of Liberia. Musu Kpakar, a community health worker, administers a rapid finger-stick test to see if malaria parasites are present in John’s blood.

Author's name:

Chris Thomas, guest blogger

Publication Date:

June 2014

Getting Health Workers to the Women Who Need Them

Carol Bales — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 15:30:30 +0000

This post was originally published on the Huffington Post’s Global Motherhood Blog.

Maureen Kanyiginya is a young midwife with a gentle, confident presence. Sitting on a bench in a grassy area outside the rural health center where she works, in western Uganda, she says she loves helping mothers and delivering their babies. “I make mothers comfortable,” she states firmly. “I’m a health worker.”

Maureen provides vital care for women in a remote area of a country that has a critical shortage of health workers, according to the World Health Organization. Uganda is one of 57 countries with fewer than 2.3 doctors, nurses, and midwives per thousand people.

Author's name:

Maurice Middleberg

Publication Date:

September 2012