Frontline Health Workers Coalition Launches in D.C.

You are in South Sudan, it’s the middle of the night and you are woken up to find a nearly unconscious woman has arrived on your doorstep needing help.  She has been in labor for nine hours and her unborn child is in breech position. There are only two options:

1.       Send the woman in labor 400 kilometers away (or an 8 hour drive) to the nearest hospital with a surgical facility, or

2.       Perform a C-Section in a make-shift operating theatre by kerosene lamp.

These are real decisions that frontline health workers in remote areas have to face and this is the story that Dr. Peter Ngatia of AMREF told Wednesday morning at the launch of the Frontline Health Worker Coalition in Washington, D.C.   

The launch of Frontline Health Worker Coalition comes at a critical time. The world’s population has reached 7 billion, but the number of trained health workers hasn’t caught up with the need. Africa is particularly struggling.  The continent represents 11 percent of the world’s population, 24 percent of the global disease burden, and just 1.3 percent of the health workers in the world! The World Health Organization estimates that an additional one million frontline health workers are needed.

RESULTS has joined forces with AMREF, Save the Children, Partners In Health, PSI, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the White Ribbon Alliance and others to form thewww.frontlinehealthworkers.org