Blog

Every day on the front lines of care, health workers – the majority of them women – answer a calling to provide the care their patients need to live life to the fullest. Without their tireless work at the local level, global progress to save lives and build healthy nations would not be possible.

This World Health Worker Week, it’s important to focus on the role of health workers in strengthening global security and creating a safer world – and how necessary that role is as we look toward the future.

Masuda, Shankori and Shilpi are women who are changing their world. They are entrepreneurial midwives that I met in Sunamganj, Bangladesh. They are improving health access in one of the most remote districts but where maternal and under-5 mortality rates have fallen dramatically in only a few years. These powerful women are also generating more income for their families and changing social norms.

Nationally, roughly 70% of deliveries in Ethiopia occur at home, and interventions such as prenatal and postnatal care are underutilized. MCSP is combating this through competency-based trainings that stress early identification of pregnancies and follow-up through the delivery and the postnatal periods.

Nurses in Lesotho run the show. But they have little power to give their patients the care they require.

The USAID HRH2030 program celebrates current and future health workers this World Health Worker Week. Now is the opportunity to make strategic health workforce investments. We cannot achieve better health without them.

Social welfare workers such as Pruden Furaha have emerged as critical frontline caregivers working at the community level to provide a safety net for people living with or at risk of contracting HIV in Tanzania.

If investment in health employment was truly proportionate to its impact, and wasn’t bound by the gender of its workers, it would be transformative.

NTDs affect more than 1 billion people worldwide. These disabling and debilitating diseases thrive in the world’s poorest communities, especially those without access to improved sanitation and hygiene, areas which often have limited access to trained and supported health workers.

The role women play in the health workforce globally – and here at home – cannot be overstated.