#whwweek

Health Heroes + Social Good Summit 

What are the most acute policy issues that face the global health workforce today? 

Sani Aliou, Doctor and Country Representative, Pathfinder International

Niger

As a practitioner, if you are in the hospital, you can see that the root causes of high mortality among the women and children are related to preventable causes, you know? Like malnutrition, which is very important. More than 40% of the children in Niger are malnourished, and this is a very big burden for the hospital. But when you look at the causes of malnutrition, pregnancies that are not spaced are the causes. So having programs that can prevent the root cause of mortality, including family planning, are very important for our country.

Why Do Health Workers Count?

Because we need them if we’re ever going to achieve our dream of universal health coverage. 

Anna af Ugglas, Midwife, Technical Specialist, Skilled Birth Attendant, UNFPA

Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR)

During my three years in Bangladesh, UNFPA did a lot of good work in developing the curriculum for midwives and discussing the midwifery regulation with the government, and now they have an act for midwives. Most of all, we ensured that the quality of the midwifery education met the international standards. That was a natural process at the time, because Bangladesh started from zero. They had no midwives at the time. This is a totally new cadre to the health system. To develop competent and motivated midwives takes a very long time and a lot of effort and good collaboration as well. The trigger and most fantastic thing with Bangladesh was the commitment by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, which was taken in 2008, to actually educate and employ 3,000 midwives by 2015. That commitment was “make-or-break” to actually move midwifery development forward. With that commitment behind us—it was done in the General Assembly in the U.N.—the government moved forward, and UNFPA was there to technically support them. Today, Bangladesh has more than 3,000 midwives educated and more or less deployed in the health system.

Working alone in his unit, Sahr Mortatay Momoh, a Mental Health Nurse, was deployed by the Ministry of Health and Sanitation in 2014 as part of a group of 21 nurses trained in mental health and posted to each district in Sierra Leone. Sahr now runs the Western Area Rural District Mental Health Unit based in Jui, at the China-Sierra Leone Friendship Hospital on the outskirts of Freetown.

Mental health is severely underfunded and under-resourced in Sierra Leone. At the time of his posting, only less than two percent of patients with mental illness received the treatment they needed. But these challenges have not stopped Sahr’s dedication to his job and to helping to reduce treatment gaps.

“Even though training others in rehabilitation medicine can be extremely challenging and exhausting, it is worth it when I see patients improving their lives and functionality through rehabilitative treatment,” said Dr. Bouathep. “It is the best part of my work, and it is why I will continue to do this work for the rest of my life. I believe that rehabilitation medicine will only improve in Laos.”