Vital global health needs.
The July cover of AJN shows a nurse-midwife counseling a new mother in Ghana. We obtained this photograph from Jhpiego, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization that has been providing health services for women and families in developing countries since 1974. Not only does this image pay tribute to the Year of the Nurse and Midwife, but it’s a reminder that though the world’s attention is focused on the mounting cases of COVID-19, other vital global health care needs deserve our attention and our support. Infant and maternal mortality; communicable diseases like TB, Ebola, and malaria; and health crises arising from disasters, poverty, and war don’t pause while we deal with this outbreak.
A stunning departure.
I’m still in disbelief that the United States has given the World Health Organization (WHO) notice that it is pulling out of the organization. In May, the White House threatened to cut funding and leave, claiming that the WHO favored China and thus mishandled the COVID-19 outbreak (this was after praising them in April). This week, the United States confirmed it will leave the WHO. A global pandemic hardly seems the time to stop collaborating with other countries as the whole planet seeks solutions to combat this new and deadly coronavirus.
The United States: there from the start.
The United States had a prominent role in the formation of the WHO, which was founded shortly after the United Nations as the agency to coordinate global health. Frank Calderone, a U.S. public health physician, was director of the headquarters office of the WHO Interim Commission. He detailed the mission and early work of the newly forming health organization in an article, “The Health of All Peoples,” in the January 1948 issue of AJN. (click on the pdf version to read) He cited policy from the preamble to the new organization:
“The achievement of any state in the protection and promotion of health is of value to all. Unequal development in different countries in the promotion of health and control of disease, especially communicable disease, is a common danger.”
I am profoundly sorry that our leaders have made this decision to take a divisive stance at a critical time—one when we should all be pulling together. Isolationism is not a realistic option in this age of global transportation and international migration, when one can travel to any part of the globe in the space of 24 hours. The speed at which this pandemic swept across the world should remind us that the health of any of us depends on the health of all of us.
Thank you for your response.
I love the photo on the cover because it reminds me of one of the biggest strengths of nursing: collaboration. Midwives develop meaningful relationships with their clients because they enter into a collaborative relationship with them. Likewise, nurses often play a pivotal role in bringing other health care professionals together for the betterment of patients. As nurses well know, utilizing a collaborative approach is not necessarily the easiest or quickest way to accomplish a task, but the outcomes for the patient are often better because (as the saying goes) two heads are better than one. Pulling the USA out of the World Health Organization is accomplishing just the opposite: favoring a competitive approach for perceived individual gain when it is clear that the world is interconnected. We can and should learn from one another and share our understandings–not doing so is risking disconnection and therefore disharmony–which will ultimately negatively affect health outcomes for all Americans.
Thank you for emphasizing the global health care needs that extend beyond COVID
I couldn’t agree with you more. As nurses it is time to say ENOUGH! NO MORE! ANA do you hear us- how and when are we going to put our money where our mouth is? Are we going to put our words into action :“Nursing is the protection, promotion, and optimization of health and abilities, prevention of illness and injury, facilitation of healing, and alleviation of suffering…” (ANA, 2015) or will we stand by and watch the disasters and crisis continue to unfold and occur? It is time for nurses to be the national leaders we claim to be.
It is well past time that the ANA and other nursing organizations make this unambiguous declaration: Donald J. Trump and the Republicans who enable his behavior as a matter of policy are a clear and present danger to national and international health. Full stop.
We all know about his (there’s no other word for this) idiocy about communicable disease as evidenced by ongoing lack of leadership and downright dangerous practices in managing COVID-19.
What other actions of omission and commission support this conclusion? Blatant contempt for women and children and their health needs by blocking safe contraception and immunizations; steadfast denial of the global warming that threatens populations with rising sea levels, droughts and flooding, and agriculture failures; denigrating science and evidence-based practices in all spheres; systematic dismantling of environmental protection regulations resulting in increased air, water, and land pollution; defunding and gutting governmental structures designed to protect the general wefare; shocking conditions in furtherance of their immigration fantasies … need we go on? Now that Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) are sending teams here and other countries ban our citizens from entry, well, there’s only one conclusion. We’re the country in crisis now, a premier source of contagion, famine, ignorance, and misery in the world. We need not look further to know why.
“Nursing is the protection, promotion, and optimization of health and abilities, prevention of illness and injury, facilitation of healing, and alleviation of suffering through the diagnosis and treatment of human response and advocacy in the care of individuals, families, groups, communities, and populations.” (ANA, 2015) Get on it, ANA.
So what is ANA’s stand on this and what are they doing about taking a stand? Is ANA working with any other Nursing organizations so we can collectively take a stand about this outrageous decision and action to withdraw from WHO ? As the largest group of healthcare providers we have a responsibility to speak rather than to stand by and be part of the problem.
I can’t speak for ANA’s activities per se, but I know they issued a statement against leaving WHO back in June. ANA is also a member of the International Council of Nurses (former ANA president Pam Cipriano is first VP of ICN) and that organization is also on record opposing this move, as are most health care organizations. It comes down to whether the current administration will listen to the voices of health care experts.