Bangladesh is one of the poorest countries in the world. With scarce medical resources, Dr. Ferdousi, a Bangladesh native, has an ingrained understanding of why 333 children and 32 mothers die in her country every day.
More often than not, children are taken by preventable and treatable illnesses, such as pneumonia, diarrhea and the effects of malnutrition. Mothers and newborns are dying because in remote villages 85 percent of births are home delivered by people who lack medical training.
Also, Dr. Ferdousi says, "If you really want to have a healthy baby, you need a healthy mother." Over her 19-year medical career, Dr. Ferdousi has trained more than 10,000 community health workers—local community members trained to treat and care for children and mothers. Currently, she oversees more than 3,000 health workers in her program with Save the Children.
Save the Children's Puskar, Dr. Ferdousi and a job well done. (Photo: Jeff Holt/World Pneumonia Day)
Tricia Puskar of Save the Children talked about the importance of having a local community member care for mothers and children:
"It's not about sending people overseas to provide temporary solutions. It's really about training people in the village that know the culture, that know the language and that can be there 24 hours a day to identify these illnesses in children and ultimately prevent and treat them."
Save the Children trains health workers in many developing countries beyond Bangladesh, including Indonesia, Guatemala and Malawi.
In many countries, the local health workers are male and female. In Bangladesh, the health workers are all women. As Dr. Ferdousi explains to TakePart: "Men do not have that much accessibility and acceptability among pregnant or lactating women."
Also, giving females the tools to save lives is a great way, Tricia Puskar of Save the Children says, "to empower women."
Dr. Ferdousi is seeing the living results of employing local health workers. In 2009, she visited the Bhola district in Bangladesh. One of the mothers told her she lost a son to pneumonia in 2005. In 2009, this mother's youngest son Nadim also became ill with pneumonia, but a community health worker was there to quickly diagnose and treat the child. Thanks to the health worker, Nadim survived.
Tricia Puskar was with Dr. Ferdousi on that visit to Nadim and his mother. Says Puskar, it's one thing to hear about the program's success, and quite another "to be there with this child who is running around living, breathing and to know their fate could have been so different had we not had a local health worker there."
Dr. Ferdousi knows that teaching is essential to curing. (Photo: Jeff Holt/World Pneumonia Day)
Thanks to organizations like Save the Children and the dedication of Dr. Ferdousi and the health workers, since 1990 Bangladesh has decreased its under five mortality rate by 64 percent and its maternal mortality rate by 53 percent. Dr. Ferdousi hopes to one day see "that every pregnancy has a happy ending."
The doctor insists that changes must be made at the policy level. She says, "The process is slow….There is money for transportation, money for doctors at the hospitals, but to me it should be strengthened and the numbers should be more in the remote areas."
Save the Children and the Ad Council's Good Goes campaign are working to not only involve local health workers but also to mobilize concern across the U.S.
Puskar of Save the Children says, "If everyone does just a little bit to take part in the campaign, it can make a big difference."
The 10,000 health-care workers that Dr. Ferdousi has trained so far during her career have saved thousands of lives in rural Bangladesh. Of the health workers in her network today, the doctor says, "Dr. Ferdousi is one, but my 3,000 volunteers, they are expanding my reach, by 3,000 hands."
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