Vital

News & commentary about the global health workforce

The Death Clock Is Counting Them: But Where Are These Women?

On Monday, Amnesty International launched the “death clock” in Times Square in New York City. Every 90 seconds, it ticks off another woman’s life lost from pregnancy-related causes.

Going Digital: Taking the Maternal Health Community Online

The “Maternal health: digital” panel closed the conference with exciting, new, and innovative ways for using technology for global health and maternal health issues.

NDM-1: A Potential Superbug Epidemic—What Does it Mean for Health Workers?

New Delhi recently joined the ranks of other metropolitan cities like Washington D.C., Berlin, Singapore, Beijing, and Moscow with antibiotic-resistant bacteria, known as a ‘superbug,’ taking its namesake.

Demanding Accountability: Key for Continuing Gains in Maternal Health

I’m really pleased to hear discussion here in Delhi at the Global Maternal Health Conference about our collective accountability. For the past several decades, we have lamented the fact that half a million women’s lives were lost every year to pregnancy-related causes.

Small Sums, Incredible Impacts: Microdonation Challenge to Support Health Worker Education in Malawi

Compared to some health interventions such as buying a bednet, educating a new health worker requires a relatively large sum of money, but it is an investment with wide-reaching and enduring impact.

Local Context Matters to Women’s Lives: A Report from Delhi

To the business world, it’s location, location, location.

Delhi-Bound with the Future of Maternal Health on My Mind

Motherhood can be a wonderful rite of passage that brings so much joy—seeing a baby’s first smile and then step, watching a child grow up.

From Polio to PEPFAR and Beyond: Can the GHI Reform the Way We Do Global Health?

For many in the blogopshere and the Twitter world Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s speech on Monday reenergized our commitment to the Global Health Initiative (GHI) and the promise of transforming the way we practice global health work. Like many, I was left with questions of how exactly this initiative will work, but Clinton’s passing reference to the polio outbreak in northern Nigeria also reminded me of the imperative that GHI succeed.

Top Ten Ways to Encourage Breastfeeding

Last week the world celebrated World Breastfeeding Week with a focus on the ten steps every health facility should take to promote successful breastfeeding.

Treatment 2.0: Aspirations for Invigorating the Global HIV/AIDS Response

Two weeks ago, the United Nations Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) released Treatment 2.0, the latest global strategy for making HIV treatment more efficient, accessible, and effective.