A New Spotlight on Global Health's Unsung Heroes

by Te-Ping Chen · 2010-07-12 15:37:00 UTC
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It's a common set-up — every x seconds, y children die of <insert disease here> — but a new ad campaign by Save the Children inverts the message. The nonprofit knows that you know too many children are regularly felled by preventable diseases. What they want to make sure you also know are the identities of the people who are saving them.

As we've written before, when it comes to the fight for global health, it's easy to preoccupy ourselves with tangible goods: medicine, bed nets, vaccines, et cetera. But one of the most powerful tools out there are, in fact, people. That's why Save the Children's "Good Goes" campaign wants you to know that every 4 seconds, around the world, a child overcomes malnutrition, disease or other health threats — all thanks to the world's health care workers.

In too many regions of the world, such health workers are in perilously short supply. For example, though sub-Saharan Africa is home to nearly one-quarter the globe's burden of disease, it's also home to just 3% of the world's health workers. The World Health Organization estimates that fully 4.25 million new health workers are needed to fill gaps around the world.

Which is why "Good Goes" is launching a nationwide PSA campaign to highlight the fact. Out of children who die before age 5 every year, nearly two-thirds can be saved with the right prevention and treatment — better midwife training, improved knowledge of sanitation and more.

The ad campaign is designed to tackle the perennial question, "That's tragic, but what can I do to help?" By offering a website and other avenues through which to support health workers around the world, the idea is to give donors an easy way to engage (around the message, "Help one. Save many.")

Save the Children is tapping into a healthy base of potential supporters, too. Consumer research they've conducted suggests that over 40% of U.S. women would be encouraged to give money or time to save the lives of newborns and children in the developing world, if only they knew what they could actually do to help. And over 50% said they'd be willing to donate money to a respected charity to support such a cause.

Check out the campaign's site here, which offers personal stories and regularly updated blog entries by health workers working from Guatemala to Indonesia. They may be global health's unsung heroes, but "Good Goes" is doing its best to nudge them out into the much-deserved spotlight.

Photo Credit: dominikgolenia

Te-Ping Chen Te-Ping Chen is a freelance writer and U.S. Truman Scholar whose writing has appeared in the Nation Magazine, the South China Morning Post magazine, Le Soir, and Slate.com.
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