Advanced Education For Health Care Workers Helps Save Children’s Lives

While global under-five mortality rates have dropped significantly over the past 20 years, they “remain far too high,” especially when “it is possible to save children’s lives using simple, low-tech, low-cost, evidence-based care that relies on manpower more than technology: vaccines, antibiotics, nutritional supplements, better family care and breast feeding,” Louisdon Pierre, director of pediatric critical care at the Brooklyn Hospital Center and co-founder of the Pediatric Universal Life-Saving Effort (PULSE), writes in a Live Science opinion piece. “The goal of PULSE is to create pediatric health hubs in developing countries where physicians, nurses and other health care workers can learn simple, critical-care techniques to reduce pediatric mortality from infections, pneumonia and dehydration,” he writes, adding, “Once local physicians are trained, they can pass the knowledge along thorough local instructors and regional centers.” Pierre continues, “To date, PULSE has conducted several missions to Haiti, El Salvador, Kenya and Nepal,” and “has trained more than 400 health care workers in the nations we have visited.” He concludes, “Reducing pediatric mortality in developing countries has significant challenges. Advanced education and training for local physicians, nurses and health care workers can make a huge difference” (8/14).

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