Blog

Lisa Bos, World Vision Midwife Rosa pays a home visit to a pregnant Nur Diana, 32, who is expecting her fifth child. Courtesy World Vision. Cell phones are everywhere. You might be reading this blog on one right now. So the question for development organizations more and more is how do we harness...

By Vince Blaser, Deputy Director, Frontline Health Workers Coalition Just how different the pregnancy, childbirth and early childhood experience can be was strewn on their faces, illustrated in their stories and validated by their work experience. Four seasoned midwives – with a combined century of...

By Allison Annette Foster, University Research Co. As the Frontline Health Workers Coalition and other advocacy movements push for increased number and integration of frontline health workers into the health systems of developing countries, we need to pause to consider the implications of this...

By Jeff Meer, Public Health Institute Organizations involved in global health have had a lot to focus on during the past several weeks. The month of May saw the 66th session of the World Health Assembly in Geneva, as well as the release of the United Nations High Level Panel’s report on the post...

By Sarah Dwyer and Geeta Sharma, IntraHealth International Sunita Kumari was struggling to get her message across. Working as an auxiliary nurse midwife in Gumla District, Jharkhand, India, she kept trying to mobilize the women of Toto, a village of 941 houses, to participate in Village Health and...

By Jonathan D. Quick, MD, MPH, President and CEO, Management Sciences for Health (MSH) Note: This blog was originally posted on the Global Health Impact blog Photo credit: Dominic Chavez Our MSH colleague Lucy Sakala was an HIV counselor in Malawi. She worked with clients who were receiving HIV...

By Inka Weissbecker, Global Mental Health and Psychosocial Advisor, International Medical Corps Two years ago, Majeed*, a Somali refugee living in the Ethiopian refugee camp in which International Medical Corps works, began acting inexplicably different. Majeed would become startled for no apparent...

By Sonia Lowman, International Medical Corps In a country where one in three children is malnourished, Aminta Shamit Koroma helps lead the fight against hunger as Sierra Leone’s national nutrition program manager. To do this, she depends on frontline health workers at the community level to make...

By Maryjane Lacoste, Country Director, Jhpiego-Tanzania Wampembe, Tanzania—In this remote corner of western Tanzania, where the nearest hospital is four hours away on a rutted, rock-strewn dirt road, pregnant women are relying on midwives Adelina Kizzila and Flora Mwananjela to help them give birth...

By Kiran Ramchandani, White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood Midwives save lives. Yet, two-thirds of women in the poorest, least developed countries give birth without a skilled birth attendant. Only when we have enough skilled midwives will we stop the needless deaths in childbirth of girls and...