To­day, April 7, is the day to cel­e­brate the work of nurs­es and mid­wives and re­mind world lead­ers of the crit­i­cal role they play in keep­ing the world healthy. Nurs­es and oth­er health work­ers are at the fore­front of COVID-19 re­sponse—pro­vid­ing high qual­i­ty, re­spect­ful treat­ment and care, lead­ing com­mu­ni­ty di­a­logue to ad­dress fears and ques­tions and, in some in­stances, col­lect­ing da­ta for clin­i­cal stud­ies. Quite sim­ply, with­out nurs­es, there would be no re­sponse.

In this In­ter­na­tion­al Year of the Nurse and the Mid­wife, World Health Day will high­light the cur­rent sta­tus of nurs­ing and around the world. The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) and its part­ners will make a se­ries of rec­om­men­da­tions to strength­en the nurs­ing and mid­wifery work­force. Please pay at­ten­tion to their web­site for fur­ther de­tails www.who.int/. This will be vi­tal if we are to achieve na­tion­al and glob­al tar­gets re­lat­ed to uni­ver­sal health cov­er­age, ma­ter­nal and child health, in­fec­tious and non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases in­clud­ing men­tal health, emer­gency pre­pared­ness and re­sponse, pa­tient safe­ty and the de­liv­ery of in­te­grat­ed, peo­ple-cen­tred care, amongst oth­ers.

The WHO is call­ing for your sup­port on World Health Day to en­sure that the nurs­ing and mid­wifery work­forces are strong enough to en­sure that every­one, every­where gets the health­care they need.

State of the World’s

Nurs­ing Re­port 2020

To­day on World Health Day, the WHO will launch the first ever State of the World’s Nurs­ing Re­port 2020. The re­port will pro­vide a glob­al pic­ture of the nurs­ing work­force and sup­port ev­i­dence-based plan­ning to op­ti­mize the con­tri­bu­tions of this work­force to im­prove health and well­be­ing for all. The re­port will set the agen­da for da­ta col­lec­tion, pol­i­cy di­a­logue, re­search and ad­vo­ca­cy, and in­vest­ment in the health work­force for gen­er­a­tions to come. A sim­i­lar re­port on the Mid­wifery work­force will be launched in 2021.

Glob­al pub­lic health days of­fer great po­ten­tial to raise aware­ness and un­der­stand­ing about health is­sues and mo­bilise sup­port for ac­tion, from the lo­cal com­mu­ni­ty to the in­ter­na­tion­al stage. There are many world days ob­served through­out the year re­lat­ed to spe­cif­ic health is­sues or con­di­tions—from Alzheimer’s to zoonoses, and even cur­rent­ly with the Nov­el Coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic.

How­ev­er, WHO fo­cus­es par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion on the 9 days and two- weeks that WHO Mem­ber States have man­dat­ed as “of­fi­cial” glob­al pub­lic health days.

Whether you are tak­ing the kids to be vac­ci­nat­ed, talk­ing to stu­dents on the dev­as­tat­ing health ef­fects of to­bac­co, or­gan­is­ing a mo­bile blood col­lec­tion in your com­mu­ni­ty, or con­tribut­ing to the on­line con­ver­sa­tion through so­cial me­dia, you can play a part in these world­wide ef­forts to cre­ate a health­i­er world.

Lead­ing up to each day, this is where you will find back­ground in­for­ma­tion, graph­ics, mul­ti-me­dia links, facts and fig­ures that help high­light the is­sues and fo­cus glob­al at­ten­tion on to­day’s ma­jor pub­lic health chal­lenges.

Let’s cel­e­brate the nurs­es and mid­wives, key front lin­ers in our health­care sys­tem!

Dr Visham Bhimull

MBBS (UWI)

Diplo­ma in Fam­i­ly Med­i­cine (UWI)