Africa

By Philip Carroll, Save the Children The Ebola outbreak which started in south eastern Guinea in early 2014, has now spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Senegal. Ebola has highlighted the devastating impact that a crisis can have on an already fragile health system and has also highlighted...

By Jenna Montgomery, International Medical Corps Emergency room nurse Nora Hellman is a frontline health worker who has responded following natural disasters and during armed conflicts around the world to provide lifesaving medical care. With a background in wilderness medicine, Nora has deployed to...

"Most of the dedicated health workers are really doing a commendable job, dedicating their lives to working in very difficult conditions and caring for persons that have come down with Ebola. What we need to do is commend them for their bravery and their commitment for caring for the patients.” –...

By Kate Greene, Abt Associates In rural Mali, auxiliary midwives—called matrones--are often the frontline of care for pregnant women, but until recently they have not had the authority and training to perform critical maternal care services. Through the USAID-supported Improving National Capacity to...

This post originally appeared on the Vital Blog By Mohamed Jallow, IntraHealth International “I am afraid for my life, I must say, because I cherish my life," said Dr. Sheik Umar Khan, one of the leading doctors fighting the spread of the Ebola virus in eastern Sierra Leone. Last week, Dr. Khan’s...

By Sarah Dwyer and Carol Bales, IntraHealth International A young boy—we’ll call him Mani—was living on the streets of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). He had no one to look after him, nowhere to go. He was just nine years old. Mani’s situation is not unique. One quarter of...

By Dr. Keith Baleeta, Julian Natukunda, University Research Co./ USAID SUSTAIN Project and Irene Biraro-Seguya, Initiatives Inc. A core challenge to fighting HIV in Uganda, as elsewhere in the developing world, is the diligence of overburdened frontline healthcare workers in getting people to test...

By Chris Thomas, USAID This post originally appeared on the USAID Frontlines Blog Djenebou Keita, a community health worker, tests a 2-year-old boy for malaria in Mali, one of 19 focus countries that benefit from the U.S. President's Malaria Initiative. Photo courtesy of USAID. With her 3-month-old...

By One Million Community Health Workers Campaign Currently, it is difficult for the global community to assess the state of the world’s community health workers. How many community health workers are out there? Who do they work in partnership with? What services do they offer? How are national...

Jarret Cassaniti, Johns Hopkins University Center for Communications Programs (JHU-CCP) Note: This blog originally appeared on the Knowledge for Health (K4Health) Blog. Since I joined K4Health almost two years ago, I have had the privilege of working with the Association of Medical Laboratory...