Community Health Workers – Indispensable, yet invisible
Who reminds an HIV-positive pregnant woman to take her vitamins and the drugs that will protect her baby from infection?
Who explains to fearful parents that COVID-19 vaccines will protect them and their children from the disease?
Who shows people how to wash their hands properly so they don’t spread germs to themselves and others?
In many countries across the globe it’s community health workers like Margaret Odera of Nairobi, Kenya.
Margaret, herself an HIV-positive mother who has managed to ensure her husband and children remain uninfected, works day and night to keep her community safe, too. Yet she feels undervalued and underpaid.
She’s become an advocate for community health workers like herself – most of whom are women, and many untrained and either underpaid or unpaid.
Listen as Margaret tells One World, One Health host Maggie Fox what she does in her work for the community, and how training and better pay are needed for her and others in her trade to promote health both locally and globally.