Blog: Health

Friday, February 8, 2019 - 00:49 by

Across the Jubba River Lives a Doctor

By Simon Nyabwengi, Country Director, World Vision Somalia

She wants to be a doctor. She does not know why. But she knows it is a good thing to be one. Maybe because when she fell sick, her mother crossed the Jubba River in Southern Somalia with her to seek medication. Here she met a doctor who treated her with kindness and gave her medicine that healed her stomach ache and fever.

I met Isnina in her village across the Jubba...

An unforgettable return to Timor-Leste

When Australian doctor Jerry Schwarz was last in Timor-Leste, the country was just emerging from 24 years of conflict and a violent independence referendum.

“I came as a voluntary doctor,” Jerry explained. “There was absolute chaos. There was no medical system or anything.”

In 1999, Timor-Leste voted for independence from Indonesia, a result that sparked mass violence and widespread destruction....

Helping the children suffering this terrible, preventable disease tightening its grip on Ethiopia

By Kebede Gizachew

I can't help but think about my own children as I enter the treatment centre.

The last time my seven-year-old son Eyasu was ill with diarrhea we rushed him to the hospital, clung to his side and searched for a medic to take action. He needed help. We needed him to be free of pain. We needed him to survive.

As the doctors and nurses took over, I carefully watched my son's movements. As he started to recover, I...

Mosul’s children suffer in sweltering camps

By Anna Zuegner, World Vision International’s Program Officer, Kurdistan Region of Iraq

Thirst

After spending hours in Hassansham – one of the camps set up for people fleeing the violence in Mosul – all I want to do is drink cool water. Thirst consumes my every thought.

My skin turned red within minutes of my arrival in the camp, despite...

Hunger is a terror we should fight with faith

My father will be 95 this year and thus was a child during the great depression in the United States. The hunger that he experienced at that time haunts him to this day. You will never see a more grateful person sitting down to every meal. And if there is a single issue he is passionate about it is hunger; most of his charitable contributions are to help the hungry.

What I have learned from my father is that hunger is a terror. While not all of us have...

Born On Time: Making prevention a priority

By Melanie Boyd, Program Director, Born On Time

What’s the world’s leading cause of death in children under five? It might come as a surprise, but preterm birth – a birth that takes place more than three weeks before the...

Ghana’s ‘Paradigm Shift’ for CHWs

Article Authors: Polly Walker, World Vision International; Raymond Owusu, World Vision Ghana

The global community has increasingly recognized the contribution of Community Health Workers (CHWs) in reducing maternal and child mortality in the hardest to reach communities with lowest access to health care. Over the last two years the government of Ghana has been working closely with the One Million Community Health Workers (1mCHW)...

Timed and Targeted Counseling - a new curriculum for Maternal and Child Health

Since 2010, World Vision has been working to strengthen its Health programming global through the 7-11 strategy, which focuses on evidence-based, cost-effective preventive practices that address the primary causes of maternal and child mortality and illness, realised within a framework for household, community and health systems support. The 7-11 strategy was a great turning point for the World...

‘By 2030, I would like to see a community of no maternal and child mortality’

By Micah Olad, Child Health Now Coordinator, World Vision Ghana

Ashanti Region, GHANA, July 2015 -- An improved health facility, staffed with skilled health professionals, stocked with life-saving medicines and commodities, accessible to all, and in demand by informed mothers and children, this is the dream of Nora Addo and her community...