Statement
Public Health Institute Joins New Coalition Calling for Increased Investment in Frontline Health Workers to Improve Global Health
The Public Health Institute joins the Frontline Health Workers Coalition in calling on the U.S. government to invest in frontline health workers in the developing world as a cost-effective way to save the lives of mothers and children as well as address AIDS and other global health threats.
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Issues
Workforce Development -
Expertise
Coalition & Network Building
Today the Public Health Institute (PHI) joins the Frontline Health Workers Coalition in calling on the U.S. government to invest in frontline health workers in the developing world as a cost-effective way to save the lives of mothers and children as well as address AIDS and other global health threats.
“Supporting the Frontline Health Workers Coalition is part of PHI’s overall strategy to advance global health,” said Suzanne Petroni, PhD, Vice President of Global Health at PHI. “By training more of these workers, we can make headway against multiple preventable illnesses that still claim too many lives around the world. We simply can’t achieve or sustain gains in global health without supporting health workers.”
Frontline health workers are often the first and only link to life-saving treatments and services for millions of children and families in the developing world. Examples of frontline health workers include community health workers, midwives, peer counselors, village pharmacists and health extension workers.
According to the World Health Organization, there is a shortage of at least one million frontline health workers in the developing world. Millions more existing health workers could save many more lives if they had proper training and support. To help close the shortfall, the Frontline Health Workers Coalition is asking the U.S. for a commitment and a strategy to train and support an additional 250,000 new frontline health workers-and to better support the capacity and impact of existing workers where the need is greatest.
The Frontline Health Workers Coalition includes 15 influential and diverse global health organizations, including PHI, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Save the Children and World Vision. Eight corporate partners are working to support the efforts of the Coalition, including Becton Dickinson, GlaxoSmithKline, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic, Merck, Novo Nordisk and Pfizer.
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