Health worker campaign takes over New Yorks Times Square - Save Children

• Skip to content

• Donate

Campaigners andcelebritiesgathered inNew York Citys iconic Times Square to call for millions more health workers in the poorest countries on Monday.

The activistsheld up more than a hundred placards which together formed a giant picture of a midwife and baby tomark the launch of Save the Childrens new report on the global health worker crisis.

Our report, No Child Out of Reach, shows 350 million children will never see a health worker during their lives.

Read No Child Out of Reach

Children living in the UK will see a doctor or a nurse at least ten times in their first five years.

But in Africa and Asia millions of children die every year from easily preventable diseases such as pneumonia and diarrhoea, simply because they have no way of being seen by a trained health worker if they fall sick.

Weve releasedour report as world leaders gather at the UN General Assembly in New York Tuesday. This week there will be a major push to secure funding to fill the global shortfall of 3.5 million health workers that is threatening the lives of millions of children across the world.

Five times more likely to die

In Africa where people shoulder a quarter of the worlds disease burden children have access to just 3% of the worlds health workers.

Children are five times more likely to die before their fifth birthday if they live in countries such as Nigeria, Ethiopia and Liberia which fall below the World Health Organization health worker threshold (of 2.3 health workers per 1000 people) than children living in countries with enough health workers.

Across the globe celebrities like Ashley Jensen, Christy Turlington Burns have joined over a million campaigners, putting pressure on their leaders to take action at the UN to make sure no child dies because they cant see a nurse or doctor.

Not acceptable

Its simply not acceptable for a child to die because a midwife or a nurse is out of reach, said Brendan Cox, Director of Policy and Advocacy at Save the Children UK.

Training health workers is simple and inexpensive, yet their impact is immense, he added. Hundreds of childrens lives will be saved by the vaccinations a health worker administers, or by the trained help they can give to pregnant mothers.

World leaders must put an end to this scandal and ensure that all children, regardless of where there are born, are able to see a health worker when they need it the most.

Find out more aboutour health worker campaign

Tags: health workers, New York, United Nations

• This entry is filed under Campaigning, Health, No child born to die.
• You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
• You can leave a response.

The views and information in the blogs andare those of the individual contributors and not those of Save the Children UK. We do not guarantee or endorse the accuracy or reliability of any advice, opinion, statement or information contained in the blogs or. We do not accept any liability for loss or damage arising from the use of or reliance on any content that is accessed through, or downloaded from the blogs andpages.

Blogare submitted automatically; we do not edit them. But we reserve the right to remove anythat we believe contains material that is obscene, offensive, inflammatory, defamatory of any person or entity, or that is otherwise illegal or inappropriate. If you wish to reportfor any reason, email us at webeditor@savethechildren.org.uk