Whilst we were in Kalela, a child arrived on a stretcher constructed using scraps of wood and cloth, having been referred from another health centre.
He was carried by two men, with a third holding an umbrella to shade the sick patient from sunlight and rain. They had walked for many hours. It is because of poverty that this boy was slow to access care.
When Sierra Leone launched the EVERY ONE campaign to save more children’s lives, it didn’t want to fall back on the tired, standard formula of simply pointing out a problem and looking to the government for solutions. What they really wanted, was CHANGE.
The 2nd Global Forum on Human Resources for Health begins tomorrow in Bangkok. Health workers will be at the centre of the debate…
In a nutshell, logistics is about getting the right ‘stuff’ to the right place at the right time, for the right price. This means that the daunting job of supplying everything that is required to carry out all of Save the Children’s work in South Sudan is the job of our logistics staff. And what a job that is.
I saw, and met a cow today. Technically it was a buffalo, but it was very exciting. We stopped at the road side to buy fruit from this amazing stall, that had such an array of fruit and veg, that I didn’t recognise most of it. But we had watermelon, and there was the buffalo, eating all the rotting stuff, that had been discarded next to the stall. So we fed it the rinds of the melon and I stroked it. But then I looked again and noticed an old woman, with her basket, who was also looking through all the rotting stuff to find food to eat.
Mass, media and magnitude. Three initial words I would use to describe the International AIDS Conference this year in Vienna. The main session room quickly filled up as everyone waited in anticipation for President Bill Clinton, who opened the plenary session on Monday.
It takes a special moment in a campaign to be able to feel the buzz and excitement mixed with tension and anxiety as people start to come out into the streets in their masses to demand action from leaders at a key meeting or event. To be able to feel that atmosphere when you’re not even close to the activity yourself means there’s really something happening out there!
Working in Mozambique a couple of years ago, I met a woman who, every month, walked overnight in order to receive her antiretroviral medication at the district hospital – a remarkable endeavour, albeit not that exceptional for people in remote communities in many parts of the developing world. In a lot more cases, distance can have deadly consequences…
Yesterday the Commonwealth Health Ministers had their meeting before the start of the World Health Assembly. The Commonwealth is a strange beast, a range of English-speaking countries, many of them former British colonies, that still hold together as a group.
I made a quick trip to Indonesia to help our team come up with a campaign plan to save babies from dying of easily preventable diseases.
Like other countries in the world, the problem is most acute in the hardest-to-reach areas. In Indonesia, this means reaching babies living on all the different islands.
I googled the question: “How many islands are there in Indonesia?” and came up with a variety of numbers: 18,306, 17,508 and 13,000. Lets just say: there are lots!!
