Raise your hand for a female health worker today

7 March 2011

We put our hands up to Merlin's Olga to celebrate the 100th International Women’s Day! Watch a short animated film - a health worker caught up in conflict.

To celebrate the 100th International Women’s Day, Merlin’s Hands Up For Health Workers campaign team is championing female health workers on the frontline, highlighting the remarkable work they do and the lives they save.

InterHealth works alongside Merlin to support the wellbeing and resilience of their workers, ensuring their effectiveness and ability to make a difference. We put our hands up to Olga, one of these remarkable health workers – Merlin’s Olga, from conflict-affected Central African Republic (CAR). Click here to watch a short animated film from our campaign partner Merlin, all about Olga, a health worker caught up in conflict.

Olga’s job is to look after three of the 11 health facilities Merlin supports in rural CAR. In total, she oversees the training of 30 health workers.

She travels between each clinic, helping to train staff as she goes, as well as make sure drugs are stocked and patients are receiving the care they need. In six short months, the difference she’s helped bring about is enormous.

Olga’s from the Central African Republic but she didn’t realise the extent to which rural health care had been abandoned;

“I’ve spent most of my professional life in Bangui, the capital, where you’re cushioned against reality. Coming here, I realised how neglected health care has been. For the first time I realised that CAR doesn’t even have the minimum level of basic health care. We’ve gone backwards.”

Ending needless deaths starts with training health workers

The difference one health worker like Olga can make is remarkable, imagine if there were many more?

Raise your hand today and you’ll be joining thousands of others including Diane Abbott MP, Lynne Featherstone MP and Margot Wallstrom from the UN who are all supporting female health workers on the frontline.

Together we can make sure health workers get the investment they need.
ACT NOW Join Merlin’s campaign for change