Women leading the fight for better health

Also available in: Español

By: Jacki Evans, Ibon Villelabeitia and Ernest Waititu

In communities around the globe, women are on the frontlines of the fight against HIV, TB and malaria, as they strive to bring health to all. Women represent nearly 70 percent of the world’s community health workers, but their contributions too often go unrecognized and their work underpaid.

On International Women’s Day, the Global Fund is celebrating the contributions and experiences of women community health workers as they bring lifesaving health services and care to the people and places that need it most and are many times the hardest to reach.

India

Ms. Upasana is on the frontline of India’s quest to defeat tuberculosis. Upasana, a community health volunteer, works at the outpatient department of a hospital in Sonipat, north of Delhi. She wades through the lines of people crowding the waiting room – mostly women in colorful saris – identifying those with symptoms of tuberculosis. Once she finds a suspected case, she accompanies them to the TB ward to speed up diagnosis and put them quickly on treatment.

TB is spread from person to person through coughing and sneezing, so putting people on treatment early reduces the risk of transmission. “People come to the hospital with many illnesses. I explain TB symptoms and tell people to bring their relatives if they have symptoms,” said Upasana.

India has the world’s highest burden of TB, but it’s committed to ending the epidemic by 2025. Efforts to find and treat more people with TB are showing remarkable progress.

Burkina Faso

Sylvie Ouedraogo saves lives on her bicycle. Malaria is the leading cause of death of children under the age of 5 in Burkina Faso. When the rainy season comes, Sylvie and her fellow community health workers jump on their bicycles and go door-to-door to give preventive antimalarial medicine to young children in rural areas. Sylvie makes sure all children in the villages she visits take the medication. Once she finishes with one hut, she makes a mark with chalk on the door, gets back on her bicycle and pedals off to the next hut.

“I love to see children grow healthy,” said Sylvie, 29, who has children ages 10, 5 and 3. Doctors say seasonal malaria chemoprevention has cut cases of malaria and anemia dramatically among children under 5. Administering antimalarial treatment has been shown to be 75% protective against uncomplicated and severe malaria in children under 5 years of age.

Rwanda

Venantia Nyiraneza, a community health worker in Rwanda’s Gisagara District, arrived at the home of Donata Muhawenimana – a young woman eight months pregnant with her first baby. Venantia was here to check on the progress of Donata’s pregnancy.

Venantia visits pregnant women in her village, offering the information they need to manage their pregnancies while advising them on the need to visit health facilities during childbirth or earlier in case of complications. She is one of 58,000 community health workers across Rwanda who bring access to health care to homes of underserved rural communities. These health workers have transformed the way health is delivered in Rwanda, making communities true agents of their health.

Rwanda’s health gains are among the world’s most dramatic. Since 1990, under-5 mortality has decreased by two-thirds and maternal mortality by three-quarters, while the percentage of women giving birth in health facilities has climbed from less than 40% to more than 90% today.