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20th November 2008 marks the launch of Hands Up for Health Workers, a campaign to help address the global shortage of health workers.
The campaign, by medical aid agency Merlin, demonstrates how the health worker crisis leads to the needless loss of millions of lives each year. Hands Up for Health Workers initially focuses on the Central African Republic, a forgotten country in the middle of Africa. Find out more at HandsUpForHealthWorkers.org
Merlin / Frederic Courbet
Over 20 per cent of children in the
Central African Republic will not live
to see their fifth birthday. Most lose
their lives to infections and diseases
which, with enough trained health
workers and basic medicines, could
easily be prevented.
REF:
Merlin / Frederic Courbet
Following a decade of conflict, it's
estimated that the Central African
Republic needs at least six times as
many health workers as it currently has.
This mother was forced to travel 40km
with her sick five-year-old child to
reach qualified care. With no buses or
ambulance in the district, it’s a
journey people have to make on foot.
REF:
Merlin / Frederic Courbet
Rural clinics in remote Nana Gribizi
district of the Central African Republic
provide essential health care. All
patients with complications, from the
minor to the life-threatening, have to
be referred to Kaga Bandoro hospital. It’
s an 18-hour walk along a dirt track
flanked by lush forest, where until
recently, rebels and bandits lay in wait.
With a plank of wood laid across the
central bar, this cart is the only means
of transport for people too sick to make
the journey on foot. It is common for
patients, mainly women in labour, to die
on the way.
REF:
Merlin / Frederic Courbet
Bifeo Banale is 15 years old. She
arrived at Ndomete health centre alone,
clutching a small bag of freshly-knitted
baby clothes. 12 hours later, baby
Monique was welcomed into the world by
candlelight, delivered by a traditional
birth attendant with no formal
qualification.
REF:
Merlin / Frederic Courbet
Merlin is renovating health posts in
Nana Gribizi. Improving standards and
facilities in rural clinics is crucial:
with few hospitals and only a handful of
specialists based exclusively in the
capital, rural health care is the
backbone of CAR's health system.
REF:
Merlin / Frederic Courbet
Olga Yetikoua is Merlin Nurse Supervisor,
overseeing the training of 30 health
staff at three Merlin-supported clinics
in Nana Gribizi, a remote district of
the Central African Republic. “I’ve
spent most of my professional life
working in the capital. Coming here, I
realised just how neglected our health
services, and health workers, have been.
I literally had to start from zero.”
REF:
Merlin / Frederic Courbet
Of the ten staff at Ndomete health
centre in the Central African Republic,
Arsene Masseo, a trained Nurse Assistant,
is the only qualified health worker. He
lives less than fifty yards from the
centre, starting work from the moment he
wakes. He and his team treat up to 100
patients a day. Arsene’s salary, less
than £30 a month, hasn’t been paid for
over six months.
“I alone cannot provide all the care. I
need support.”
REF:
Merlin / Frederic Courbet
The faces of the future. Second year
medical students at Bangui Medical
School are only too aware of the health
crisis facing their country.
“To become a doctor in CAR, your aim is
humanitarian, not financial. Our people
are suffering. We must work together and
have the strength to do what those who
came before us could not.”
Franklin Goumbe, 22-year–old medical
student.
To find out more please visit www.
handsupforhealthworkers.
org
REF:
[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]
