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It’s time for action — let’s go!

Our health worker campaign is now well under way.

With the UN General Assembly (UNGA) fast approaching, we’ve been ensuring that the UK government not only attends the meeting but makes commitments to fund, train and deploy more health workers.

We’ve been all over the country this summer asking people to take action, including signing our petition, adding voices to our audio/visual Time for Action campaign and holding local events with campaigners across the country.

Perhaps the best quote of the summer was from an 8-year-old potential campaigner at Wilderness festival last weekend who described our tent as her “favourite tent of the whole festival” and told us that she would get “everyone to sign our petition”.  Before leading the charge with “Let’s go!”.

Over 16,000 people have signed up so far — thank you!

In your area

Our campaigners have been active throughout the country.

From Sheffield Hallam to Sutton Coldfield, they’ve been writing letters, signing petitions and organising local stunts.

Campaigner groups are planning to present giant prescriptions to their MPs, calling on them to put pressure on the Prime Minister before the UN meeting and to prescribe more health workers for poor countries.

For your very own health worker campaign pack with all the info you need to get involved, email campaigns@savethechildren.org.uk

Festivals

We’ve been to Camp Bestival, Womad, Rhythms of the World, Wilderness, Feis, Bristol Balloon (check out our photos).

We’ll be closing our festival season with V Festival this weekend. If you’re there, come and add your voice.

We’ve met thousands of great people, who took time out from finding the next big thing in music (although not sure Eliza Doolittle hit the mark for me — put The Cuban Brother’s on and we’re talking) to discuss the issues and share their concerns about the global health worker shortage.

Taking centre stage at the Save the Children pitch at Feis Festival.

Hear from a midwife in Liberia

Liberia has one of the highest rates of children and mothers dying in Africa.

Most shockingly, there is only one doctor per 100,000 people in Liberia.

In stark contrast, in the UK there is one doctor per 365 people.

This highlights the importance of our campaign and the injustice of the situation.

I was inspired earlier this week to read an account of a Liberian health worker and the challenges she faces daily.

“Being a midwife hasn’t been easy.  When I graduated I chose to work in remote areas of Liberia even though I could make better money in a hospital because I knew the need was so great.

“We didn’t have even the most basic materials: anti-septics, running water, an autoclave.  Our scissors had been used to many times they were completely dull.” Rebecca Salifu, certified midwife, Kakata, Liberia.

Now is the time for action

As Rebecca’s story highlights, doctors, nurses and midwives are vital to saving children’s lives.  But there’s a massive shortfall of health workers in the world’s poorest countries.

We are asking the UK government to make a difference by concentrating on countries like Liberia, Ethiopia, and Afghanistan which have some of the highest rates of children and mothers dying in the world.

We want to see these commitments by the end of the year so that we can begin to save even more children’s lives.

If you haven’t already, take action today

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